UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT    LOS  ANGELES 


a 


IRISH  IMPRESSIONS 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 


HERETICS 

ORTHODOXY 

THE  CRIMES  OF  ENGLAND 

A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF 

ENGLAND 

ALL  THINGS  CONSIDERED 

THE  BALL  AND  THE  CROSS 

GEORGE  BERNARD  SHAW 

MANALIVE 

THE  FLYING  INN 

THE  INNOCENCE  OF 

FATHER  BROWN 

THE  WISDOM  OF  FATHER 

BROWN 

THE  NAPOLEON  OF 

NOTTING  HILL 

POEMS 

THE  BALLAD  OF  THE 
WHITE  HORSE 


IRISH 
IMPRESSIONS 


BY 

G.   K.  CHESTERTON 

author  of 
"herktics,"  "orthodoxy," 

"a  short  history  of  ENGLAND,** 
ITC. 


^   -J  J  3   .    ,    ■     .    -  - 


>    > 


NEW  YORK 

JOHN  LANE  COMPANY 

IICMXX 


Copyright,  1919, 
By  John  Lane  Company 


«    c 

«    * 

t  •. 


'  •    «  »         t 

'  t     n  *      *  «  ' 


•     •      i      .  •! 

•  •    •  • 


•     •     • 


•  t        I   •    - 

•  •  .  C 


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CONTENTS 


V 


^ 


^ 


CHAPTER  PAGB 

I.  Two  Stones  in  a  Square      .      .      ,      .      9 

II.  The  Root  of  Reality    .      .      ,      ,      ,    22 

III.  The  Family  and  the  Feud       ...    47 

IV.  The  Paradox  of  Labour      ...»    66 
V.  The  Englishman  in  Ireland    ...    89 

VI.  The  Mistake  of  England   .      .      .      .108 

VII.  The  Mistake  of  Ireland     ....  131 

VIII.  An  Example  and  a  Question    .      .      .159 

IX.  Belfast  and  the  Religious  Problem    .  190 


lU  26~9 


IRISH  IMPRESSIONS 


I — Two  Stones  in  a  Square 


WHEN  I  had  for  the  first  time 
crossed  St.  George's  Channel,  and 
for  the  first  time  stepped  out  of  a 
Dublin  hotel  on  to  St.  Stephen's 
Green,  the  first  of  all  my  impressions  was  that 
of  a  particular  statue,  or  rather  portion  of  a 
statue.  I  left  many  traditional  mysteries  al- 
ready in  my  track,  but  they  did  not  trouble  me 
as  did  this  random  glimpse  or  vision.  I  have 
never  understood  why  the  Channel  is  called 
St.  George's  Channel ;  it  would  seem  more  nat- 
ural to  call  it  St.  Patrick's  Channel  since  the 
great  missionary  did  almost  certainly  cross 
that  unquiet  sea  and  look  up  at  those  myste- 
rious mountains.  And  though  I  should  be 
enchanted,  in  an  abstract  artistic  sense,  to 
imagine  St.  George  sailing  towards  the  sun- 
set, flying  the  silver  and  scarlet  colours  of  his 
cross,  I  cannot  in  fact  regard  that  journey  as 


10  Irish  Impressions 

the  most  fortunate  of  the  adventures  of  that 
flag.  Nor,  for  that  matter,  do  I  know  why 
the  Green  should  be  called  St.  Stephen's 
Green,  nor  why  the  parliamentary  enclosure 
at  Westminster  is  also  connected  with  the  first 
of  the  martyrs;  unless  it  be  because  St.  Ste- 
phen was  killed  with  stones.  The  stones  piled 
together  to  make  modern  political  buildings, 
might  perhaps  be  regarded  as  a  cairn,  or  heap 
of  missiles,  marking  the  place  of  the  murder 
of  a  witness  to  the  truth.  And  while  it  seems 
unlikely  that  St.  Stephen  was  pelted  with 
statues  as  well  as  stones,  there  are  undoubt- 
edly statues  that  might  well  kill  a  Christian 
at  sight.  Among  these  graven  stones,  from 
which  the  saints  suffer,  I  should  certainly  in- 
clude some  of  those  figures  in  frock  coats 
standing  opposite  St.  Stephen's,  Westminster. 
There  are  many  such  statues  in  Dublin  also; 
but  the  one  with  which  I  am  concerned  was 
at  first  partially  veiled  from  me.  And  the 
veil  was  at  least  as  symbolic  as  the  vision. 

I  saw  what  seemed  the  crooked  hind  legs 
of  a  horse  on  a  pedestal  and  deduced  an  eques- 
trian statue,  in  the  somewhat  bloated  fashion 


Two  Stones  in  a  Square  11 


of  the  early  eighteenth  century  equestrian 
statues.  But  the  figure,  from  where  I  stood, 
was  wholly  hidden  in  the  tops  of  trees  grow- 
ing round  it  in  a  ring;  masking  it  with  leafy 
curtains  or  draping  it  with  leafy  banners. 
But  they  were  green  banners,  that  waved  and 
glittered  all  about  it  in  the  sunlight;  and  the 
face  they  hid  was  the  face  of  an  English  king. 
Or  rather,  to  speak  more  correctly,  a  German 
king. 

When  laws  can  stay  ...  it  was  impossible 
that  an  old  rhyme  should  not  run  in  my  head, 
and  words  that  appealed  to  the  everlasting 
revolt  of  the  green  things  of  the  earth.  .  .  . 
"  And  when  the  leaves  in  summer  time  their 
colour  dare  not  show."  The  rhyme  seemed 
to  reach  me  out  of  remote  times  and  find  ar- 
resting fulfilment,  like  a  prophecy;  it  was  im- 
possible not  to  feel  that  I  had  seen  an  omen. 
I  was  conscious  vaguely  of  a  vision  of  green 
garlands  hung  on  gray  stone;  and  the  wreaths 
were  living  and  growing,  and  the  stone  was 
dead.  Something  in  the  simple  substances 
and  elemental  colours,  in  the  white  sunlight, 
and  the  sombre  and  even  secret  image,  held 


12  Irish  Impressions 

the  mind  for  a  moment  in  the  midst  of  all 
the  moving  city,  like  a  sign  given  in  a  dream. 
I  was  told  that  the  figure  was  that  of  one  of 
the  first  Georges;  but  indeed  I  seemed  to 
know  already  that  it  was  the  White  Horse  of 
Hanover  that  had  thus  grown  gray  with  Irish 
weather  or  green  with  Irish  foliage.  I  knew 
only  too  well,  already,  that  the  George  who 
had  really  crossed  the  Channel  was  not  the 
saint.  This  was  one  of  those  German  princes 
whom  the  English  aristocracy  used  when  it 
made  the  English  domestic  polity  aristocratic 
and  the  English  foreign  policy  German. 
Those  Englishmen  who  think  the  Irish  are 
pro-German,  or  those  Irishmen  who  think  the 
Irish  ought  to  be  pro-German,  would  pre- 
sumably expect  the  Dublin  populace  to  have 
hung  the  statue  of  this  German  deliverer  with 
national  flowers  and  nationalist  flags.  For 
some  reason,  however,  I  found  no  traces  of 
Irish  tributes  round  the  pedestal  of  the  Teu- 
tonic horseman.  I  wondered  how  many  peo- 
ple in  the  last  fifty  years  have  ever  cared 
about  it,  or  even  been  conscious  of  their  own 
carelessness.     I  wonder  how  many  have  ever 


Two  Stones  in  a  Square  13 


troubled  to  look  at  it,  or  even  troubled  not  to 
look  at  it.  If  it  fell  down,  I  wonder  whether 
anybody  would  put  it  up  again.  I  do  not 
know;  I  only  know  that  Irish  gardeners,  or 
some  such  Irish  humorists,  had  planted  trees 
in  a  ring  round  that  prancing  equestrian  fig- 
ure; trees  that  had,  so  to  speak,  sprung  up 
and  choked  him,  making  him  more  unrecog- 
nisable than  a  Jack-in-the-Green.  Jack  or 
George  had  vanished;  but  the  Green  re- 
mained. 

About  a  stone's-throw  from  this  calamity 
in  stone  there  stood,  at  the  corner  of  a  gor- 
geously coloured  flower-walk,  a  bust  evidently 
by  a  modern  sculptor  with  modern  symbolic 
ornament  surmounted  by  the  fine  falcon  face 
of  the  poet  Mangan;  who  dreamed  and  drank 
and  died,  a  thoughtless  and  thriftless  outcast, 
in  the  darkest  of  the  Dublin  streets  around 
that  place.  This  individual  Irishman  really 
was  what  we  were  told  that  all  Irishmen  were, 
hopeless,  heedless,  irresponsible,  impossible,  a 
tragedy  of  failure.  And  yet  it  seemed  to  be 
his  head  that  was  lifted  and  not  hidden;  the 
gay  flowers  only  showed  up  this  graven  im- 


14  Irish  Impressions 

age  as  the  green  leaves  shut  out  the  other; 
everything  around  him  seemed  bright  and 
busy,  and  told  rather  of  a  new  time.  It  was 
clear  that  modern  men  did  stop  to  look  at 
him;  indeed  modern  men  had  stayed  there 
long  enough  to  make  him  a  monument.  It 
was  almost  certain  that  if  his  monument  fell 
down,  it  really  would  be  put  up  again.  I 
think  it  very  likely  there  would  be  competi- 
tion among  advanced  modern  artistic  schools 
of  admitted  crankiness  and  unimpeachable 
lunacy;  that  somebody  would  want  to  cut  out 
a  Cubist  Mangan  in  a  style  less  of  stone  than 
of  bricks;  or  to  set  up  a  Vorticist  Mangan, 
like  a  frozen  whirlpool,  to  terrify  the  chil- 
dren playing  in  that  flowery  lane.  For  when 
I  afterwards  went  into  the  Dublin  Art  Club, 
or  mixed  generally  in  the  stimulating  society 
of  the  intellectuals  of  the  Irish  capital,  I 
found  a  multitude  of  things  which  moved 
both  my  admiration  and  amusement.  Per- 
haps the  best  thing  of  all  was  that  it  was  the 
one  society  that  I  have  seen  where  the  in- 
tellectuals were  Intellectual.  But  nothing 
pleased  me  more  than  the  fact  that  even  Irish 


Two  Stones  in  a  Square  1^ 

art  was  taken  with  a  certain  Irish  pugnacity; 
as  if  there  could  be  street  fights  about  aesthetics 
as  there  once  were  about  theology.  I  could 
almost  imagine  an  appeal  for  pikes  to  settle 
a  point  about  art  needlework,  or  a  sugges- 
tion of  dying  on  the  barricades  for  a  differ- 
ence about  bookbinding.  And  I  could  still 
more  easily  imagine  a  sort  of  ultra-civilised 
civil  war  round  the  half-restored  bust  of  poor 
Mangan.  But  it  was  in  a  yet  plainer  and 
more  popular  sense  that  I  felt  that  bust  to  be 
the  sign  of  a  new  world,  where  the  statue  of 
Royal  George  was  only  the  ruin  of  an  old  one. 
And  though  I  have  since  seen  many  much 
more  complex,  and  many  decidedly  contradic- 
tory things  in  Ireland,  the  allegory  of  those 
two  stone  images  in  that  public  garden  has 
remained  in  my  memory,  and  has  not  been 
reversed.  The  Glorious  Revolution,  the  great 
Protestant  Deliverer,  the  Hanoverian  Succes- 
sion, these  things  were  the  very  pageant  and 
apotheosis  of  success.  The  Whig  aristocrat 
was  not  merely  victorious;  it  was  as  a  victor 
that  he  asked  for  victory.  The  thing  was 
fully  expressed  in  all  the  florid  and  insolent 


16  Irish  Impressions 

statuary  of  the  period,  in  all  those  tumid 
horsemen  in  Roman  uniform  and  Rococo  per- 
iwigs shown  as  prancing  in  perpetual  motion 
down  shouting  streets  to  their  triumphs;  only 
to-day  the  streets  are  empty  and  silent,  and 
the  horse  stands  still.  Of  such  a  kind  was 
the  imperial  figure  round  which  the  ring  of 
trees  had  risen,  like  great  green  fans  to  soothe 
a  sultan,  or  great  green  curtains  to  guard  him. 
But  it  was  in  a  sort  of  mockery  that  his  pa- 
vilion was  thus  painted  with  the  colour  of  his 
conquered  enemies.  For  the  king  was  dead 
behind  his  curtains,  his  voice  will  be  heard 
no  more,  and  no  man  will  even  wish  to  hear 
it,  while  the  world  endures.  The  dynastic 
eighteenth  century  is  dead  if  anything  is  dead; 
and  these  idols  at  least  are  only  stones.  But 
only  a  few  yards  away,  the  stone  that  the 
builders  rejected  is  really  the  head  of  a  cor- 
ner, standing  at  the  corner  of  a  new  pathway, 
coloured  and  crowded  with  children  and  with 
flowers. 

That,  I  suspect,  is  the  paradox  of  Ireland 
in  the  modern  world.  Everything  that  was 
thought  progressive,  as  a  prancing  horse,  has 


Two  Stones  in  a  Square  17 

come  to  a  standstill.  Everything  that  was 
thought  decadent,  as  a  dying  drunkard,  has 
risen  from  the  dead.  All  that  seemed  to  have 
reached  a  cul  de  sac  has  turned  the  corner, 
and  stands  at  the  opening  of  a  new  road.  All 
that  thought  itself  on  a  pedestal  has  found 
itself  up  a  tree.  And  that  is  why  those  two 
chance  stones  seem  to  me  to  stand  like  graven 
images  on  either  side  of  the  gateway  by  which 
a  man  enters  Ireland.  And  yet  I  had  not  left 
the  same  small  enclosure  till  I  had  seen  one 
other  sight  which  was  even  more  symbolic 
than  the  flowers  near  the  foot  of  the  poet's 
pedestal.  A  few  yards  beyond  the  Mangan 
bust  was  a  model  plot  of  vegetables,  like  a 
kitchen  garden  with  no  kitchen  or  house  at- 
tached to  it,  planted  out  in  a  patchwork  of 
potatoes,  cabbages,  and  turnips,  to  prove  how 
much  could  be  done  with  an  acre.  And  I 
realised  as  in  a  vision  that  all  over  the  new 
Ireland  that  patch  is  repeated  like  a  pattern; 
and  where  there  is  a  real  kitchen  garden  there 
is  also  a  real  kitchen;  and  it  is  not  a  com- 
munal kitchen.  It  is  more  typical  even  than 
the  poet  and  the  flowers;  for  these  flowers  are 


18  Irish  Impressions 

also  food,  and  this  poetry  is  also  property; 
property  which,  when  properly  distributed,  is 
the  poetry  of  the  average  man.  It  was  only 
afterwards  that  I  could  realise  all  the  reali- 
ties to  which  this  accident  corresponded;  but 
even  this  little  public  experiment,  at  the  first 
glance,  had  something  of  the  meaning  of  a 
public  monument.  It  was  this  which  the 
earth  itself  had  reared  against  the  monstrous 
image  of  the  German  monarch;  and  I  might 
have  called  this  chapter  Cabbages  and  Kings. 
My  life  is  passed  in  making  bad  jokes  and 
seeing  them  turn  into  true  prophecies.  In 
the  little  town  in  South  Bucks,  where  I  live, 
I  remember  some  talk  of  appropriate  cere- 
monies in  connection  with  the  work  of  send- 
ing vegetables  to  the  Fleet.  There  was  a  sug- 
gestion that  these  proceedings  should  end  with 
"  God  Save  the  King,"  an  amendment  by 
some  one  (of  a  more  naval  turn  of  mind)  to 
substitute  "  Rule  Britannia;"  and  the  opposi- 
tion of  one  individual,  claiming  to  be  of  Irish 
extraction,  who  loudly  refused  to  lend  a  voice 
to  either.  Whatever  I  retain,  in  such  rural 
scenes,  of  the  frivolity  of  Fleet  Street  led  me 


Two  Stones  in  a  Square  19 

to  suggest  that  we  could  all  join  in  singing 
"  The  Wearing  of  the  Greens."  But  I  have 
since  discovered  that  this  remark,  like  other 
typical  utterances  of  the  village  idiot,  was  in 
truth  inspired;  and  was  a  revelation  and  a 
vision  from  across  the  sea,  a  vision  of  what 
was  really  being  done,  not  by  the  village  idiots 
but  by  the  village  wise  men.  For  the  whole 
miracle  of  modern  Ireland  might  well  be 
summed  up  in  the  simple  change  from  the 
word  "  green  "  to  the  word  "  greens."  Nor 
would  it  be  true  to  say  that  the  first  is  poet- 
ical and  the  second  practical.  For  a  green 
tree  is  quite  as  poetical  as  a  green  flag;  and 
no  one  in  touch  with  history  doubts  that  the 
waving  of  the  green  flag  has  been  very  useful 
to  the  growing  of  the  green  tree.  But  I  shall 
have  to  touch  upon  all  such  controversial  top- 
ics later,  for  those  to  whom  such  statements 
are  still  controversial.  Here  I  would  only 
begin  by  recording  a  first  impression  as  viv- 
idly coloured  and  patchy  as  a  modernist  pic- 
ture; a  square  of  green  things  growing  where 
they  are  least  expected;  the  new  vision  of  Ire- 
land.    The  discovery,  for  most  Englishmen, 


20  Irish  Impressions 

will  be  like  touching  the  trees  of  a  faded  tap- 
estry, and  finding  the  forest  alive  and  full  of 
birds.  It  will  be  as  if,  on  some  dry  urn  or 
dreary  column,  figures  which  had  already  be- 
gun to  crumble  magically  began  to  move  and 
dance.  For  culture  as  well  as  mere  caddish- 
ness  assumed  the  decay  of  these  Celtic  or 
Catholic  things;  there  were  artists  sketching 
the  ruins  as  well  as  trippers  picnicking  in 
them;  and  it  was  not  only  evidence  that  a 
final  silence  had  fallen  on  the  harp  of  Tara, 
that  it  did  not  play  "  Tararaboomdeay." 
Englishmen  believed  in  Irish  decay  even 
when  they  were  large-minded  enough  to  la- 
ment it.  It  might  be  said  that  even  those 
who  were  penitent  because  the  thing  was 
murdered,  were  quite  convinced  that  it  was 
killed.  The  meaning  of  these  green  and 
solid  things  before  me  is  that  it  Is  not  a  ghost 
that  has  risen  from  the  grave.  A  flower,  like 
a  flag,  might  be  little  more  than  a  ghost;  but 
a  fruit  has  that  sacramental  solidity  which  in 
all  mythologies  belongs  not  to  a  ghost  but  to 
a  god.    This  sight  of  things  sustaining,  and 


Two  Stones  in  a  Square  21 

a  beauty  that  nourishes  and  does  not  merely 
charm,  is  the  premonition  of  practicality  in 
the  miracle  of  modern  Ireland.  It  is  a  mir- 
acle more  marvellous  than  the  resurrection  of 
the  dead.     It  is  the  resurrection  of  the  body. 


// — The  Root  of  Reality 


THE  only  excuse  of  literature  is  to  make 
things  new;  and  the  chief  misfortune 
of  journalism  is  that  it  has  to  make 
them  old.  What  is  hurried  has  to  be 
hackneyed.  Suppose  a  man  has  to  write  on 
a  particular  subject,  let  us  say  America;  if 
he  has  a  day  to  do  it  in,  it  is  possible  that, 
in  the  last  afterglow  of  sunset,  he  may  have 
discovered  at  least  one  thing  which  he  him- 
self really  thinks  about  America.  It  is  con- 
ceivable that  somewhere  under  the  evening 
star  he  may  have  a  new  idea,  even  about  the 
new  world.  If  he  has  only  half  an  hour  in 
which  to  wTite,  he  will  just  have  time  to  con- 
sult an  encyclopaedia  and  vaguely  remember 
the  latest  leading  articles.  The  encyclopedia 
will  be  only  about  a  decade  out  of  date;  the 
leading  articles  will  be  aeons  out  of  date — 
having  been  written  under  similar  conditions 

22 


The  Root  of  Reality  28 


of  modern  rush.  If  he  has  only  a  quarter  of 
an  hour  in  which  to  write  about  America,  he 
may  be  driven  in  mere  delirium  and  madness 
to  call  her  his  Gigantic  Daughter  in  the  west, 
to  talk  of  the  feasibility  of  Hands  Across  the 
Sea,  or  even  to  call  himself  an  Anglo-Saxon, 
when  he  might  as  well  call  himself  a  Jute. 
But  whatever  debasing  banality  be  the  effect 
of  business  scurry  in  criticism,  it  is  but  one 
example  of  a  truth  that  can  be  tested  in  twenty 
fields  of  experience.  If  a  man  must  get  to 
Brighton  as  quickly  as  possible,  he  can  get 
there  quickest  by  travelling  on  rigid  rails  on 
a  recognised  route.  If  he  has  time  and 
money  for  motoring,  he  will  still  use  public 
roads;  but  he  will  be  surprised  to  find  how 
many  public  roads  look  as  new  and  quiet  as 
private  roads.  If  he  has  time  enough  to  walk, 
he  may  find  for  himself  a  string  of  fresh  foot- 
paths, each  one  a  fairy-tale.  This  law  of  the 
leisure  needed  for  the  awakening  of  wonder 
applies,  indeed,  to  things  superficially  famil- 
iar as  well  as  to  things  superficially  fresh. 
The  chief  case  for  old  enclosures  and  bounds 
aries  is  that  they  enclose  a  space  in  which  new 


\ 


24  Irish  Impressions 

things  can  always  be  found  later,  like  live 
fish  within  the  four  corners  of  a  net.  The 
chief  charm  of  having  a  home  that  is  secure 
is  having  leisure  to  feel  it  as  strange. 

I  have  often  done  the  little  I  could  to 
correct  the  stale  trick  of  taking  things  for 
granted :  all  the  more  because  it  is  not  even 
taking  them  for  granted.  It  is  taking  them 
without  gratitude;  that  is,  emphatically  as  not 
granted.  Even  one's  own  front  door,  released 
by  one's  own  latchkey,  should  not  only  open 
inward  on  things  familiar,  but  outward  on 
things  unknown.  Even  one's  own  domestic 
fireside  should  be  wild  as  well  as  domesti- 
cated; for  nothing  could  be  wilder  than  fire. 
But  if  this  light  of  the  higher  ignorance 
should  shine  even  on  familiar  places,  it  should 
naturally  shine  most  clearly  on  the  roads  of 
a  strange  land.  It  would  be  well  if  a  man 
could  enter  Ireland  really  knowing  that  he 
knows  nothing  about  Ireland;  if  possible,  not 
even  the  name  of  Ireland.  The  misfortune 
is  that  most  men  know  the  name  too  well, 
and  the  thing  too  little.  This  book  would 
probably  be  a  better  book,  as  well  as  a  bet- 


The  Root  of  Reality  25 

ter  joke,  if  I  were  to  call  the  island  through- 
out by  some  name  like  Atlantis,  and  only  re- 
veal on  the  last  page  that  I  was  referring  to 
Ireland.  Englishmen  would  see  a  situation 
of  great  interest,  objects  with  which  they 
could  feel  considerable  sympathy,  and  oppor- 
tunities of  which  they  might  take  consider- 
able advantage,  if  only  they  would  really  look 
at  the  place  plain  and  straight,  as  they  would 
at  some  entirely  new  island,  with  an  entirely 
new  name,  discovered  by  that  seafaring  ad- 
venture which  is  the  real  romance  of  Eng- 
land. In  short,  he  might  do  something  with 
it,  if  he  would  only  treat  it  as  an  object  in 
front  of  him,  and  not  as  a  subject  or  story  left 
behind  him.  There  will  be  occasion  later  to 
say  all  that  should  be  said  of  the  need  of 
studying  the  Irish  story.  But  the  Irish  story 
is  one  thing,  and  what  is  called  the  Irish 
Question  quite  another;  and  in  a  purely  prac- 
tical sense  the  best  thing  the  stranger  can  do 
is  to  forget  the  Irish  Question  and  look  at 
the  Irish.  If  he  looked  at  them  simply  and 
steadily,  as  he  would  look  at  the  natives  of 
an  entirely  new  nation  with  a  new  name,  he 


26  Irish  Impressions 

would  become  conscious  of  a  very  strange  but 
entirely  solid  fact.  He  would  become  con- 
scious of  it,  as  a  man  in  a  fairy  tale  might  be- 
come conscious  that  he  had  crossed  the  bor- 
der of  fairyland,  by  such  a  trifle  as  a  talking 
cow  or  a  haystack  walking  about  on  legs. 

For  the  Irish  Question  has  never  been 
discussed  in  England.  Men  have  discussed 
Home  Rule ;  but  those  who  advocated  it  most 
warmly,  and  as  I  think  wisely,  did  not  even 
know  what  the  Irish  meant  by  Home.  Men 
have  talked  about  Unionism;  but  they  have 
never  even  dared  to  propose  Union.  A  Un- 
ionist ought  to  mean  a  man  who  is  not  even 
conscious  of  the  boundary  of  the  two  coun- 
tries; who  can  walk  across  the  frontier  of 
fairyland,  and  not  even  notice  the  walking 
haystack.  As  a  fact,  the  Unionist  always 
shoots  at  the  haystack;  though  he  never  hits 
it.  But  the  limitation  is  not  limited  to  Un- 
ionists; as  I  have  already  said,  the  English 
Radicals  have  been  quite  as  incapable  of  go- 
ing to  the  root  of  the  matter.  Half  the  case 
for  Home  Rule  was  that  Ireland  could  not 
be  trusted  to  the  English  Home  Rulers.    They 


The  Root  of  Reality  27 

also,  to  recur  to  the  parable,  have  been  un- 
able to  take  the  talking  cow  by  the  horns; 
for  I  need  hardly  say  that  the  talking  cow 
is  an  Irish  bull.  What  has  been  the  matter 
with  their  Irish  politics  was  simply  that  they 
were  English  politics.  They  discussed  the 
Irish  Question;  but  they  never  seriously  con- 
templated the  Irish  Answer.  That  is,  the 
Liberal  was  content  with  the  negative  truth, 
that  the  Irish  should  not  be  prevented  from 
having  the  sort  of  law  they  liked.  But  the 
Liberal  seldom  faced  the  positive  truth,  about 
what  sort  of  law  they  would  like.  He  in- 
stinctively avoided  the  very  imagination  of 
this;  for  the  simple  reason  that  the  law  the 
Irish  would  like  is  as  remote  from  what  is 
called  Liberal  as  from  what  is  called  Union- 
ist. Nor  has  the  Liberal  ever  embraced  it 
in  his  broadest  liberality,  nor  the  Unionist 
ever  absorbed  it  into  his  most  complete  uni- 
fication. It  remains  outside  us  altogether,  a 
thing  to  be  stared  at  like  a  fairy  cow;  and  by 
far  the  wisest  English  visitor  is  he  who  will 
simply  stare  at  it.  Sooner  or  later  he  will 
see  what  it  means;  which  is  simply  this:  that 


28  Irish  Impressions 

whether  it  be  a  case  for  coercion  or  emanci- 
pation (and  it  might  be  used  either  way)  the 
fact  is  that  a  free  Ireland  would  not  only  not 
be  what  we  call  lawless,  but  might  not  even 
be  what  we  call  free.  So  far  from  being  an 
anarchy,  it  would  be  an  orderly  and  even  con- 
servative civilisation — like  the  Chinese.  But 
it  would  be  a  civilisation  so  fundamentally 
different  from  our  own,  that  our  own  liberals 
would  differ  from  it  as  much  as  our  own  con- 
servatives. The  fair  question  for  an  English- 
man is  whether  that  fundamental  difference 
would  make  division  dangerous;  it  has  al- 
ready made  union  impossible.  Now  in  turn- 
ing over  these  notes  of  so  brief  a  visit,  suf- 
fering from  all  the  stale  scurry  of  my  jour- 
nalistic trade,  I  have  been  in  doubt  between 
a  chronological  and  a  logical  order  of  events. 
But  I  have  decided  in  favour  of  logic,  of  the 
high  light  that  really  revealed  the  picture, 
and  by  which  I  firmly  believe  that  everything 
else  should  be  seen.  And  if  any  one  were  to 
ask  me  what  was  the  sight  that  struck  me  most 
in  Ireland,  both  as  strange  and  as  significant, 
I  should  know  what  to  reply.     I  saw  it  long 


The  Boot  of  Reality  29 

after  I  had  seen  the  Irish  cities,  had  felt  some- 
thing of  the  brilliant  bitterness  of  Dublin  and 
the  stagnant  optimism  of  Belfast;  but  I  put 
it  first  here  because  I  am  certain  that  with- 
out it  all  the  rest  is  meaningless;  that  it  lies 
behind  all  politics,  enormous  and  silent,  as 
the  great  hills  lie  beyond  Dublin. 

I  was  moving  in  a  hired  motor  down  a 
road  in  the  North-West,  towards  the  middle 
of  that  rainy  autumn.  I  was  not  moving  very 
fast;  because  the  progress  was  slowed  down 
to  a  solemn  procession  by  crowds  of  families 
with  their  cattle  and  live  stock  going  to  the 
market  beyond ;  which  things  also  are  an  alle- 
gory. But  what  struck  my  mind  and  stuck 
in  it  was  this :  that  all  down  one  side  of  the 
road,  as  far  as  we  went,  the  harvest  was  gath- 
ered in  neatly  and  safely;  and  all  down  the 
other  side  of  the  road  it  was  rotting  in  the 
rain.  Now  the  side  where  it  was  safe  was 
a  string  of  small  plots  worked  by  peasant  pro- 
prietors, as  petty  by  our  standards  as  a  row 
of  the  cheapest  villas.  The  land  on  which  all 
the  harvest  was  wasted  was  the  land  of  a  large 
modern   estate.     I   asked   why  the   landlord 


30  hish  Impressions 

was  later  with  his  harvesting  than  the  peas- 
ants; and  I  was  told  rather  vaguely  that  there 
had  been  strikes  and  similar  labour  troubles, 
I  did  not  go  into  the  rights  of  the  matter; 
but  the  point  here  is  that,  whatever  they  were, 
the  moral  is  the  same.  You  may  curse  the 
cruel  Capitalist  landlord  or  you  may  rave  at 
the  ruffianly  Bolshevist  strikers;  but  you  must 
admit  that  between  them  they  had  produced 
a  stoppage,  which  the  peasant  proprietorship 
a  few  yards  off  did  not  produce.  You  might 
support  either  where  they  conflicted,  but  you 
could  not  deny  the  sense  in  which  they  had 
combined,  and  combined  to  prevent  what  a 
few  rustics  across  the  road  could  combine  to 
produce.  For  all  that  we  in  England  agree 
about  and  disagree  about,  all  for  which  we 
fight  and  all  from  which  we  differ,  our  dark- 
ness and  our  light,  our  heaven  and  hell,  were 
there  on  the  left  side  of  the  road.  On  the 
right  side  of  the  road  lay  something  so  differ- 
ent that  we  do  not  even  differ  from  it.  It 
may  be  that  Trusts  are  rising  like  towers  of 
gold  and  iron,  overshadowing  the  earth  and 
shutting  out  the  sun ;  but  they  are  only  rising 


The  Root  of  Eeality  31 

on  the  left  side  of  the  road.  It  may  be  that 
Trades  Unions  are  laying  labyrinths  of  inter- 
national insurrection,  cellars  stored  with  the 
dynamite  of  a  merely  destructive  democracy; 
but  all  that  international  maze  lies  to  the  left 
side  of  the  road.  Employment  and  unem- 
ployment are  there;  Marx  and  the  Manches- 
ter School  are  there.  The  left  side  of  the 
road  may  even  go  through  amazing  transfor- 
mations of  its  own;  its  story  may  stride  across 
abysses  of  anarchy;  but  it  will  never  step 
across  the  road.  The  landlord's  estate  may 
become  a  sort  of  Morris  Utopia,  organised 
communally  by  Socialists,  or  more  probably 
by  Guild  Socialists.  It  may  (as  I  fear  is 
much  more  likely)  pass  through  the  stage  of 
an  employer's  model  village  to  the  condition 
of  an  old  pagan  slave-state.  But  the  peasants 
across  the  road  would  not  only  refuse  the 
Servile  State,  but  would  quite  as  resolutely 
refuse  the  Utopia.  Europe  may  seem  to  be 
rent  from  end  to  end  by  the  blast  of  a  Bol- 
shevist trumpet,  sundering  the  bourgeois  from 
the  proletarian;  but  the  peasant  across  the 
road  is  neither  a  bourgeois  nor  a  proletarian. 


32  Irish  Impressions 

England  may  seem  to  be  rent  by  an  irrecon- 
cilable rivalry  between  Capital  and  Labour; 
but  the  peasant  across  the  road  is  both  a  cap- 
italist and  a  labourer.  He  is  several  other 
curious  things;  including  the  man  who  got  his 
crops  in  first;  who  was  literally  first  in  the 
field. 

To  an  Englishman,  especially  a  Londoner, 
this  was  like  walking  to  the  corner  of  a  Lon- 
don street  and  finding  the  policeman  in  rags, 
with  a  patch  on  his  trousers  and  a  smudge 
on  his  face;  but  the  crossing-sweeper  wearing 
a  single  eyeglass  and  a  suit  fresh  from  a  West 
End  tailor.  In  fact,  it  w^as  nearly  as  surpris- 
ing as  a  walking  haystack  or  a  talking  cow. 
What  was  generally  dingy,  dilatory,  and 
down-at-heels  was  here  comparatively  tidy 
and  timely;  what  was  orderly  and  organised 
was  belated  and  broken  down.  For  it  must 
be  sharply  realised  that  the  peasant  proprie- 
tors succeeded  here,  not  only  because  they 
were  really  proprietors,  but  because  they  were 
only  peasants.  It  was  because  they  were  on 
a  small  scale  that  they  were  a  great  success. 
It  was  because  they  were  too  poor  to  have 


The  Root  of  Reality  33 

servants  that  they  grew  rich  in  spite  of  strik- 
ers. It  was,  so  far  as  it  went,  the  flattest  pos- 
sible contradiction  to  all  that  is  said  in  Eng- 
land, both  by  Collectivists  and  Capitalists, 
about  the  efficiency  of  the  great  organisation. 
For  in  so  far  as  it  had  failed,  it  had  actually 
failed,  not  only  through  being  great,  but 
through  being  organised.  On  the  left  side  of 
the  road  the  big  machine  had  stopped  work- 
ing, because  it  was  a  big  machine.  The  small 
men  were  still  working,  because  they  were  not 
machines.  Such  were  the  strange  relations  of 
the  two  things,  that  the  stars  in  their  courses 
fought  against  Capitalism;  that  the  very 
clouds  rolling  over  that  rocky  valley  warred 
for  its  pigmies  against  its  giants.  The  rain 
falls  alike  on  the  just  and  the  unjust;  yet  here 
it  had  not  fallen  alike  on  the  rich  and  poor. 
It  had  fallen  to  the  destruction  of  the  rich. 
Now  I  do,  as  a  point  of  personal  opinion, 
believe  that  the  right  side  of  the  road  was 
really  the  right  side  of  the  road.  That  is,  I 
believe  it  represented  the  right  side  of  the 
question;  that  these  little  pottering  peasants 
had  got  hold  of   the  true  secret,  which   is 


34  Irish  Impressions 

"'  — " ■ • — '  '  '  ^ 

missed  both  by  Capitalism  and  Collectivism. 
But  I  am  not  here  urging  my  own  preferences 
on  my  own  countrymen;  and  I  am  not  con- 
cerned primarily  to  point  out  that  this  is  an 
argument  against  Capitalism  and  Collectiv- 
ism. What  I  do  point  out  is  that  it  is  the 
fundamental  argument  against  Unionism. 
Perhaps  it  is,  on  that  ultimate  level,  the  only 
^argument  against  Unionism;  which  is  prob- 
ably why  it  is  never  used  against  Unionists. 
I  mean,  of  course,  that  it  was  never  really 
used  against  English  Unionists  by  English 
Home  Rulers,  in  the  recriminations  of  that 
Irish  Question  which  was  really  an  English 
Question.  The  essential  demanded  of  that 
question  was  merely  that  it  should  be  an  open 
question;  a  thing  rather  like  an  open  wound. 
Modern  industrial  society  is  fond  of  prob- 
lems, and  therefore  not  at  all  fond  of  solu- 
tions. A  consideration  of  those  who  really 
have  understood  this  fundamental  fact  will  be 
sufficient  to  show  how  confusing  and  useless 
are  the  mere  party  labels  in  the  matter. 
George  Wyndham  was  a  Unionist  who  was 
deposed  because  he  was  a  Home  Ruler.     Sir 


Tlie  Root  of  Reality  35 

Horace  Plunkett  is  a  Unionist  who  is  trusted 
because  he  is  a  Home  Ruler.  By  far  the  most 
revolutionary  piece  of  Nationalism  that  was 
ever  really  effected  for  Ireland  was  effected 
by  Wyndham,  who  was  an  English  Tory 
squire.  And  by  far  the  most  brutal  and 
brainless  piece  of  Unionism  that  was  ever 
imposed  on  Ireland  was  imposed  in  the  name 
of  the  Radical  theory  of  Free  Trade,  when 
the  Irish  juries  brought  in  verdicts  of  wilful 
murder  against  Lord  John  Russell.  I  say 
this  to  show  that  my  sense  of  a  reality  is  quite 
apart  from  the  personal  accident  that  I  have 
myself  always  been  a  Radical  in  English  pol- 
itics, as  well  as  a  Home  Ruler  in  Irish  pol- 
itics. But  I  say  it  even  more  in  order  to  re- 
affirm that  the  English  have  first  to  forget  all 
their  old  formula  and  look  at  a  new  fact. 
It  is  not  a  new  fact;  but  it  is  new  to  them. 

To  realise  it,  we  must  not  only  go  outside 
the  British  parties  but  outside  the  British 
Empire,  outside  the  very  universe  of  the  or- 
dinary Briton.  The  real  question  can  be  eas- 
ily stated,  for  it  is  as  simple  as  it  is  large. 
What  is  going  to  happen  to  the  peasantries 


36  Irish  Iinpressions 

of  Europe,  or  for  that  matter  of  the  whole 
world?  It  would  be  far  better,  as  I  have  al- 
ready suggested,  if  we  could  consider  it  as  a 
new  case  of  some  peasantry  in  Europe,  or 
somewhere  else  in  the  world.  It  would  be  far 
better  if  we  ceased  to  talk  of  Ireland  and  Scot- 
land, and  began  to  talk  of  Ireland  and  Serbia. 
Let  us,  for  the  sake  of  our  own  mental  com- 
posure, call  this  unfortunate  people  Slovenes. 
But  let  us  realise  that  these  remote  Slovenes 
are,  by  the  testimony  of  every  truthful  trav- 
eller, rooted  in  the  habit  of  private  property, 
and  now  ripening  into  a  considerable  private 
prosperity.  It  will  often  be  necessary  to  re- 
member that  the  Slovenes  are  Roman  Cath- 
olics; and  that,  with  that  impatient  pugnacity 
which  marks  the  Slovene  temperament,  they 
have  often  employed  violence,  but  always  for; 
the  restoration  of  what  they  regarded  as  a 
reasonable  system  of  private  property.  Now 
in  a  hundred  determining  districts,  of  which 
France  is  the  most  famous,  this  system  has 
prospered.  It  has  its  own  faults  as  well  as 
its  own  merits;  but  it  has  prospered.  What 
is  going  to  happen  to  it?     I  will  here  confine 


The  Root  of  Reality  37 


myself  to  saying  with  the  most  solid  confi- 
dence what  is  not  going  to  happen  to  it.  It 
is  not  going  to  be  really  ruled  by  Socialists; 
and  it  is  not  going  to  be  really  ruled  by  mer- 
chant princes,  like  those  who  ruled  Venice  or 
like  those  who  rule  England. 

It  is  not  so  much  that  England  ought  not 
to  rule  Ireland  as  that  England  cannot.  It 
is  not  so  much  that  Englishmen  cannot  rule 
Irishmen,  as  that  merchants  cannot  rule  peas- 
ants. It  is  not  so  much  merely  that  we  have 
dealt  benefits  to  England  and  blows  to  Ire- 
land. It  is  that  our  benefits  for  England 
would  be  blows  to  Ireland.  And  this  we  al- 
ready began  to  admit  in  practice,  before  we 
had  even  dimly  begun  to  conceive  it  in  the- 
ory. We  do  not  merely  admit  it  in  special 
laws  against  Ireland  like  the  Coercion  Acts, 
or  special  laws  in  favour  of  Ireland  like  the 
Land  Acts;  it  is  admitted  even  more  by  spe- 
cially exempting  Ireland  than  by  specially 
studying  Ireland.  In  other  words,  whatever 
else  the  Unionists  want,  they  do  not  want  to 
unite;  they  are  not  quite  so  mad  as  that.  I 
cannot  myself  conceive  any  purpose  in  hav- 

21i  ^-0 


38  Irish  Impressions 


ing  one  parliament  except  to  pass  one  law; 
and  one  law  for  England  and  Ireland  is  sim- 
ply something  that  becomes  more  insanely  im- 
possible every  day.     If  the  two  societies  were 
stationary,  they  would  be  sufficiently  separate; 
but  they  are  both  moving  rapidly  in  opposite 
directions.     England  may  be  moving  towards 
a  condition  which  some  call  Socialism,  and  I 
call  Slavery;  but  whatever  it  is,  Ireland  is 
speeding  farther  and  farther  from  it.     What- 
ever it  is,  the  men  who  manage  it  will  no  more 
be  able  to  manage  a  European  peasantry  than 
the    peasants    in    these    mud    cabins    could 
manage  the  Stock  Exchange.     All  attempts, 
whether  imperial  or  international,  to  lump 
these   peasants   along  with   some   large   and 
shapeless  thing  called  Labour,  are  part  of  a 
cosmopolitan  illusion  which  sees  mankind  as 
a  map.    The  world  of  the  International  is  a 
pill,  as  round  and  as  small.     It  is  true  that 
all  men  want  health;  but  it  Is  certainly  not 
true  that  all  men  want  the  same  medicine. 
Let  us  allow  the  cosmopolitan  to  survey  the 
world  from  China  to  Peru;  but  do  not  let  us 


The  Root  of  Reality  3d 

allow  the  chemist  to  identify  Chinese  opium 
and  Peruvian  bark. 

My  parallel  about  the  Slovenes  was  only  a 
fancy;  yet  I  can  give  a  real  parallel  from  the 
Slavs  which  is  a  fact.  It  was  a  fact  from  my 
own  experience  in  Ireland;  and  it  exactly 
illustrates  the  real  international  sympathies  of 
peasants.  Their  internationalism  has  nothing 
to  do  with  the  International.  I  had  not  been 
in  Ireland  many  hours  when  several  people 
mentioned  to  me  with  considerable  excitement 
some  news  from  the  Continent.  They  were 
not,  strange  as  it  may  seem,  dancing  with  joy 
over  the  disaster  of  Caporetto,  or  glowing 
with  admiration  of  the  Crown  Prince.  Few 
really  rejoiced  in  English  defeats;  and  none 
really  rejoiced  in  German  victories.  It  was 
news  about  the  Bolshevists;  but  it  was  not  the 
news  of  how  nobly  they  had  given  votes  to 
the  Russian  women,  nor  of  how  savagely  they 
had  fired  bullets  into  the  Russian  princesses. 
It  was  the  news  of  a  check  to  the  Bolshevists; 
but  it  was  not  a  glorification  of  Kerensky  or 
Korniloff,  or  any  of  the  newspaper  heroes  who 


40  Irish  Impressions 

seem  to  have  satisfied  us  all,  so  long  as  their 
names  began  with  K  and  nobody  knew  any- 
thing about  them.  In  short,  it  was  nothing 
that  could  be  found  in  all  our  myriad  news- 
paper articles  on  the  subject.  I  would  give 
an  educated  Englishman  a  hundred  guesses 
about  what  it  was ;  but  even  if  he  knew  it,  he 
would  not  know  what  it  meant. 

It  had  appeared  in  the  little  paper  about 
peasant  produce  so  successfully  conducted  by 
Mr.  George  Russell,  the  celebrated  "  A.  E.," 
and  it  was  told  me  eagerly  by  the  poet  him- 
self, by  a  learned  and  brilliant  Jesuit,  and  by 
several  other  people,  as  the  great  news  from 
Europe.  It  was  simply  the  news  that  the 
Jewish  Socialists  of  the  Bolshevist  Govern- 
ment had  been  attempting  to  confiscate  the 
peasants'  savings  in  the  co-operative  banks; 
and  had  been  forced  to  desist.  And  they 
spoke  of  it  as  of  a  great  battle  won  on  the 
Danube  or  the  Rhine.  That  is  what  I  mean 
when  I  say  that  these  people  are  of  a  pattern 
and  belong  to  a  system  which  cuts  across  all 
our  own  political  divisions.  They  felt  them- 
selves fighting  the  Socialists  as  fiercely  as  any 


The  Root  of  Reality  4<1 

Capitalist  can  feel  it;  but  they  not  only  knew 
what  they  were  fighting  against,  but  what  they 
were  fighting  for;  which  is  more  than  the 
Capitalist  does.  I  do  not  know  how  far  mod- 
ern Europe  really  shows  a  menace  of  Bol- 
shevism, or  how  far  merely  a  panic  of  Capi- 
talism. But  I  know  that  if  any  honest  re- 
sistance has  to  be  offered  to  mere  robbery,  the 
resistance  of  Ireland  will  be  the  most  honest, 
and  probably  the  most  important.  It  may  be 
that  international  Israel  will  launch  against 
us  out  of  the  East  an  insane  simplification  of 
the  unity  of  Man,  as  Islam  once  launched  out 
of  the  East  an  insane  simplification  of  the 
unity  of  God.  If  it  be  so,  it  is  where  prop- 
erty is  well  distributed  that  it  will  be  well 
defended.  The  post  of  honour  will  be  with 
those  who  fight  in  very  truth  for  their  own 
land.  If  ever  there  came  such  a  drive  of  wild 
dervishes  against  us,  it  would  be  the  chariots 
and  elephants  of  plutocracy  that  would  roll 
in  confusion  and  rout;  and  the  squares  of  the 
peasant  infantry  would  stand. 

Anyhow,  the  first  fact  to  realise  is  that  we 
are  dealing  with  a  European  peasantry;  and 


42  Irish  Impressions 

it  would  be  really  better,  as  I  say,  to  think  of 
it  first  as  a  Continental  peasantry.  There  arc 
numberless  important  inferences  from  this 
fact;  but  there  is  one  point,  politically  topical 
and  urgent,  on  which  I  may  well  touch  here. 
It  will  be  well  to  understand  about  this  peas- 
antry something  that  we  generally  misunder- 
stand, even  about  a  Continental  peasantry. 
English  tourists  in  France  or  Italy  commonly 
make  the  mistake  of  supposing  that  the  peo- 
ple cheat,  because  the  people  bargain,  or  at- 
tempt to  bargain.  When  a  peasant  asks  ten- 
pence  for  something  that  is  worth  fourpencc, 
the  tourist  misunderstands  the  whole  problem. 
He  commonly  solves  it  by  calling  the  man  a 
thief  and  paying  the  tenpence.  There  are  ten 
thousand  errors  in  this,  beginning  with  the 
primary  error  of  an  oligarchy,  of  treating  a 
man  as  a  servant  when  he  feels  more  like  a 
small  squire.  The  peasant  does  not  choose  to 
receive  insults;  but  he  never  expected  to  re- 
ceive tenpence.  A  man  who  understood  him 
would  simply  suggest  twopence,  in  a  calm  and 
courteous  manner;  and  the  two  would  event- 
ually meet  in  the  middle  at  a  perfectly  just 


The  Root  of  Reality  43 

price.  There  would  not  be  what  we  call  a 
fixed  price  at  the  beginning,  but  there  would 
be  a  very  firmly  fixed  price  at  the  end:  that 
is,  the  bargain  once  made  would  be  a  sacredly 
sealed  contract.  The  peasant,  so  far  from 
cheating,  has  his  own  horror  of  cheating;  and 
certainly  his  own  fury  at  being  cheated.  Now 
in  the  political  bargain  with  the  English,  the 
Irish  simply  think  they  have  been  cheated. 
They  think  Home  Rule  was  stolen  from  them 
after  the  contract  was  sealed;  and  it  will  be 
hard  for  any  one  to  contradict  them.  If  ^'  le 
Rot  le  veult"  is  not  a  sacred  seal  on  a  con- 
tract, what  is?  The  sentiment  is  stronger  be- 
cause the  contract  was  a  compromise.  Home 
Rule  was  the  fourpencc  and  not  the  tenpence; 
and,  in  perfect  loyalty  to  the  peasant's  code 
of  honour,  they  have  now  reverted  to  the  ten- 
pence.  The  Irish  have  now  returned  in  a 
reaction  of  anger  to  their  most  extreme  de- 
mands; not  because  we  denied  what  they  de- 
manded, but  because  wc  denied  what  we  ac- 
cepted. As  I  shall  have  occasion  to  note,  there 
arc  other  and  wilder  elements  in  the  quarrel; 
but  the  first  fact  to  remember  is  that  the  quar- 


44  Irish  Impressions 

rel  began  with  a  bargain,  that  it  will  probably 
have  to  end  with  another  bargain;  and  that 
it  will  be  a  bargain  with  peasants.  On  the 
whole,  in  spite  of  abominable  blunders  and 
bad  faith,  I  think  there  is  still  a  chance  of 
bargaining,  but  we  must  see  that  there  is  no 
chance  of  cheating.  We  may  haggle  like 
peasants,  and  remember  that  their  first  offer 
is  not  necessarily  their  last.  But  we  must  be 
as  honest  as  peasants;  and  that  is  very  hard 
for  politicians.  The  great  Parnell,  a  squire 
who  had  many  of  the  qualities  of  a  peasant 
(qualities  the  English  so  wildly  misunder- 
stood as  to  think  them  English,  when  they 
were  really  very  Irish),  converted  his  people 
from  a  Fenianism  fiercer  than  Sinn  Fein  to  a 
Home  Rule  more  moderate  than  that  which 
sane  statesmanship  could  now  offer  to  Ireland. 
But  the  peasants  trusted  Parnell,  not  because 
they  thought  he  Avas  asking  for  it,  but  because 
they  thought  he  could  get  it.  Whatever  we 
decide  to  give  to  Ireland,  we  must  give  It; 
it  Is  now  worse  than  useless  to  promise  it. 
I  will  say  here,  once  and  for  all,  the  hardest 
thing  that  an  Englishman  has  to  say  of  his 


The  Root  of  Reality  45 


impressions  of  another  great  European  peo- 
ple: that  over  all  those  hills  and  valleys  our 
word  is  wind,  and  our  bond  is  waste  paper. 
But,  in  any  case,  the  peasantry  remains:  and 
the  whole  weight  of  the  matter  is  that  it  will 
remain.     It  is  much  more  certain  to  remain 
than  any  of  the  commercial  or  colonial  sys- 
tems that  will  have  to  bargain  with  it.     We 
may  honestly  think  that  the  British  Empire  is 
both  more  liberal  and  more  lasting  than  the 
Austrian    Empire,    or   other   large    political 
combinations.     But  a   combination   like   the 
Austrian  Empire  could  go  to  pieces,  and  ten 
such  combinations  could  go  to  pieces,  before 
people  like  the  Serbians  ceased  to  desire  to 
be  peasants,  and  to  demand  to  be  free  peas- 
ants.    And  the  British  combination,  precisely 
because  it  is  a  combination  and  not  a  com- 
munity, is  in  its  nature  more  lax  and  liable  to 
real    schism    than    this    sort   of    community, 
which  might  almost  be  called  a  communion. 
Any  attack  on  it  is  like  an  attempt  to  abolish 
grass;  which  is  not  only  the  symbol  of  it  in 
the  old  national  song,  but  it  is  a  very  true  sym- 
bol of  it  in  any  new  philosophic  history;  a 


4<5  Irish  Impressions 

symboJ  of  its  equality,  its  ubiquity,  its  mul- 
tiplicity, and  its  mighty  power  to  return.  To 
fight  against  grass  is  to  fight  against  God;  we 
can  only  so  mismanage  our  own  city  and  our 
own  citizenship  that  the  grass  grows  in  our 
own  streets.  And  even  then  it  is  our  streets 
that  will  be  dead;  and  the  grass  will  still  be 
alive. 


Ill — The  Family  and  tJie  Feud 

THERE  was  an  old  joke  of  my  child- 
hood, to  the  effect  that  men  might  be 
grouped  together  with  reference  to 
their  Christian  names.  I  have  for- 
gotten the  cases  then  under  consideration;  but 
contemporary  examples  would  be  sufficiently 
suggestive  to-day.  A  ceremonial  brother- 
hood -  in  -  arms  between  Father  Bernard 
Vaughan  and  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  seems  full 
of  possibilities.  I  am  faintly  pleased  with  the 
fancy  of  Mr.  Arnold  Bennett  endeavouring 
to  extract  the  larger  humanities  of  fiction 
from  the  political  differences  of  Mr.  Arnold 
White  and  Mr.  Arnold  Lupton.  I  should 
pass  my  own  days  in  the  exclusive  society  of 
Professor  Gilbert  Murray  and  Sir  Gilbert 
Parker;  whom  I  can  conceive  as  differing  on 
some  points  from  each  other,  and  on  some 
points  from  me.     Now  there  is  one  odd  thing 


48  Irish  Impressions 

to  notice  about  this  old  joke;  that  it  might 
have  been  taken  in  a  more  serious  spirit, 
though  in  a  saner  style,  in  a  yet  older  period. 
This  fantasy  of  the  Victorian  Age  might  eas- 
ily have  been  a  fact  of  the  Middle  Ages. 
There  would  have  been  nothing  abnormal  in 
the  moral  atmosphere  of  mediaevalism  in  some 
feast  or  pageant  celebrating  the  fellowship  of 
men  who  had  the  same  patron  saint.  It  seems 
mad  and  meaningless  now,  because  the  mean- 
ing of  Christian  names  has  been  lost.  They 
have  fallen  into  a  kind  of  chaos  and  oblivion 
which  is  highly  typical  of  our  time.  I  mean 
that  there  are  still  fashions  in  them,  but  no 
longer  reasons  for  them.  For  a  fashion  is  a 
custom  without  a  cause.  A  fashion  is  a  cus- 
tom to  which  men  cannot  get  accustomed; 
simply  because  it  is  without  a  cause.  That  is 
why  our  industrial  societies,  touching  every 
topic  from  the  cosmos  to  the  coat-collars,  are 
merely  swept  by  a  succession  of  modes  which 
are  merely  moods.  They  are  customs  that 
fail  to  be  customary.  And  so,  amid  all  our 
fashions  in  Christian  names,  we  have  forgot- 
ten all  that  was  meant  by  the  custom  of  Chris- 


The  Family  and  the  Feud  49 


tian  names.  We  have  forgotten  all  the  orig- 
inal facts  about  a  Christian  name;  but,  above 
all,  the  fact  that  it  was  Christian. 

Now  if  we  note  this  process  going  on  in  the 
world  of  London  or  Liverpool,  we  shall  see 
that  it  has  already  gone  even  farther  and  fared 
even  worse.  The  surname  also  is  losing  its 
root  and  therefore  its  reason.  The  surname 
has  become  as  solitary  as  a  nickname.  For  it 
might  be  argued  that  the  first  name  is  meant 
to  be  an  individual  and  even  isolated  thing; 
but  the  last  name  is  certainly  meant,  by  all 
logic  and  history,  to  link  a  man  with  his  hu- 
man origins,  habits,  or  habitation.  Histori- 
cally, it  was  a  word  taken  from  the  town  he 
lived  in  or  the  trade  guild  to  which  he  be- 
longed; legally  it  is  still  the  word  on  which 
all  questions  of  legitimacy,  succession,  and 
testamentary  arrangements  turn.  It  is  meant 
to  be  the  corporate  name;  in  that  sense  it  is 
meant  to  be  the  impersonal  name,  as  the  other 
is  meant  to  be  the  personal  name.  Yet  in  the 
modern  mode  of  industrialism,  it  is  more  and 
more  taken  in  a  manner  at  once  lonely  and 
light.    Any  corporate  social  system  built  upon 


50  Irish  Impressions 

it  would  seem  as  much  of  a  joke  as  the  joke 
about  Christian  names  with  which  I  began. 
If  it  would  seem  odd  to  require  a  Thomas 
to  make  friends  with  any  other  Thomas,  it 
would  appear  almost  as  perplexing  to  insist 
that  any  Thompson  must  love  any  other 
Thompson.  It  may  be  that  Sir  Edward 
Henry,  late  of  the  Police  Force,  does  not  wish 
to  be  confined  to  the  society  of  Mr.  Edward 
Clodd.  But  would  Sir  Edward  Henry  nec- 
essarily have  sought  the  society  of  Mr.  O. 
Henry,  entertaining  as  that  society  would 
have  been?  Sir  John  Barker,  founder  of  the 
great  Kensington  emporium,  need  not  spe- 
cially seek  out  and  embrace  Mr.  John  Mase- 
field ;  but  need  he,  any  more  swiftly,  precipi- 
tate himself  into  the  arms  of  Mr.  Granville 
Barker?  This  vista  of  varieties  would  lead 
us  far;  but  it  is  enough  to  notice,  non- 
sense apart,  that  the  most  ordinary  Eng- 
lish surnames  have  become  unique  in  their 
social  significance;  they  stand  for  the  man 
rather  than  the  race  or  the  origins.  Even 
when  they  are  most  common  they  are 
not   communal.     What   we   call   the   family 


The  Family  and  the  Feud  51 

name  is  not  now  primarily  the  name  of  the 
family.  The  family  itself,  as  a  corporate 
conception,  has  already  faded  into  the  back- 
ground, and  is  in  danger  of  fading  from  the 
background.  In  short,  our  Christian  names 
are  not  the  only  Christian  things  that  we  may 
lose. 

Now  the  second  solid  fact  which  struck  me 
in  Ireland  (after  the  success  of  small  property 
and  the  failure  of  large  organisation)  was  the 
fact  that  the  family  v/as  in  a  flatly  contrary 
position.  All  I  have  said  above,  in  current 
language,  about  the  whole  trend  of  the  mod- 
ern world,  is  directly  opposite  to  the  whole 
trend  of  the  modern  Irish  world.  Not  only 
is  the  Christian  name  a  Christian  name;  but 
(what  seems  still  more  paradoxical  and  even 
pantomimic)  the  family  name  is  really  a  fam- 
ily name.  Touching  the  first  of  the  two,  it 
would  be  easy  to  trace  out  some  very  interest- 
ing truths  about  it,  if  they  did  not  divert  us 
from  the  main  truth  of  this  chapter:  the  sec- 
ond great  truth  about  Ireland.  People  con- 
trasting the  "  education  "  of  the  two  countries, 
or  seeking  to  extend  to  the  one  the  thing  which 


52  Irish  Impressions 

is  called  education  in  the  other,  might  indeed 
do  worse  than  study  the  simple  problem  of 
the  meaning  of  Christian  names.  It  might 
dawn  at  last,  even  on  educationists,  that  there 
is  a  value  in  the  content  as  well  as  the  extent 
of  culture;  or  (in  other  words),  that  know- 
ing nine  hundred  words  is  not  always  more 
important  than  knowing  what  some  of  them 
mean.  It  is  strictly  and  soberly  true  that  any 
peasant,  in  a  mud  cabin  in  County  Clare, 
when  he  names  his  child  Michael,  may  really 
have  a  sense  of  the  presence  that  smote  down 
Satan,  the  arms  and  plumage  of  the  paladin 
of  Paradise.  I  doubt  whether  it  is  so  over- 
whelmingly probable  that  any  clerk  in  any 
villa  on  Clapham  Common,  when  he  names 
his  son  John,  has  a  vision  of  the  holy  eagle 
of  the  Apocalypse,  or  even  of  the  mystical  cup 
of  the  disciple  whom  Jesus  loved.  In  the 
face  of  that  simple  fact,  I  have  no  doubt  about 
which  is  the  more  educated  man;  and  even 
a  knowledge  of  the  Daily  Mail  does  not  re- 
dress the  balance.  It  is  often  said,  and  pos- 
sibly truly,  that  the  peasant  named  Michael 
cannot  write  his  own  name.     But  it  is  quite 


The  Family  and  the  Feud  53 

equally  true  that  the  clerk  named  John  can- 
not read  his  own  name.  He  cannot  read  it 
because  it  is  in  a  foreign  language,  and  he 
has  never  been  made  to  realise  what  it  stands 
for.  He  does  not  know  that  John  means 
John,  as  the  other  man  does  know  that 
Michael  means  Michael.  In  that  rigidly 
realistic  sense,  the  pupil  of  industrial  intel- 
lectualism  does  not  even  know  his  own  name. 
But  this  is  a  parenthesis;  because  the  point 
here  is  that  the  man  in  the  street  (as  distinct 
from  the  man  in  the  ifield)  has  been  separated 
not  only  from  his  private  but  from  his  more 
public  description.  He  has  not  only  forgot- 
ten his  name,  but  forgotten  his  address.  In 
my  own  view,  he  Is  like  one  of  those  unfor- 
tunate people  who  wake  up  with  their  minds 
a  blank,  and  therefore  cannot  find  their  way 
home.  But  whether  or  no  we  take  this  view 
of  the  state  of  things  in  an  industrial  society 
like  the  English,  we  must  realise  firmly  that 
a  totally  opposite  state  of  things  exists  In  an 
agricultural  society  like  the  Irish.  We  may 
put  it,  if  we  like,  in  the  form  of  an  unfamiliar 
and  even  unfriendly  fancy.     We  may  say  that 


54  Irish  Impressions 


the  house  is  greater  than  the  man;  that  the 
house  is  an  amiable  ogre  that  runs  after  and 
recaptures  the  man.     But  the  fact  is  there,  fa- 
miliar or  unfamiliar,  friendly  or  unfriendly; 
and  the  fact  is  the  family.     The  family  pride 
is  prodigious;  though  it  generally  goes  along 
with  glowing  masses  of  individual  humility. 
And  this  family  sentiment  does  attach  itself 
to  the  family  name;   so  that  the  very  lan- 
guage in  which  men  think  is  made  up  of  fam- 
ily names.     In  this  the  atmosphere  is  singu- 
larly unlike  that  of  England  though  much 
more  like  that  of  Scotland.     Indeed,  it  will 
illustrate   the   impartial   recognition  of  this, 
apart  from  any  partisan  deductions,  that  it  is 
equally  apparent  in  the  place  where  Ireland 
and   Scotland  are  supposed  to  meet.     It  is 
equally  apparent  in  Ulster,  and  even  in  the 
Protestant  corner  of  Ulster. 

In  all  the  Ulster  propaganda  I  came  across, 
I  think  the  thing  that  struck  me  most  sharply 
was  one  phrase  in  one  Unionist  leading  arti- 
cle. It  was  something  that  might  fairly  be 
called  Scottish;  something  which  was  really 
even  more  Irish;  but  something  which  could 


The  Family  and  the  Feud  55 


not  in  the  wildest  mood  be  called  English, 
and  therefore  could  not  with  any  rational 
meaning  be  called  Unionist.  Yet  it  was  part 
of  a  passionately  sincere,  and  indeed  truly 
human  and  historic  outburst  of  the  politics  of 
the  northeast  corner,  against  the  politics  of  the 
rest  of  Ireland.  Most  of  us  remember  that 
Sir  Edward  Carson  put  into  the  Government 
a  legal  friend  of  his  named  Campbell;  it  was 
at  the  beginning  of  the  war,  and  few  of  us 
thought  anything  of  the  matter  except  that  it 
was  stupid  to  give  posts  to  Carsonites  at  the 
most  delicate  crisis  of  the  cause  in  Ireland. 
Since  then,  as  we  also  know,  the  same  Camp- 
bell has  shown  himself  a  sensible  man,  which 
I  should  translate  as  a  practical  Home  Ruler; 
but  which  is  anyhow  something  more  than 
what  is  generally  meant  by  a  Carsonite.  I 
entertain,  myself,  a  profound  suspicion  that 
Carson  also  would  very  much  like  to  be  some- 
thing more  than  a  Carsonite.  But  however 
this  may  be,  his  legal  friend  of  whom  I  speak 
made  an  excellent  speech,  containing  some 
concession  to  Irish  popular  sentiment.  As 
might  have  been  expected,  there  were  furious 


56  Irish  Impressions 

denunciations  of  him  in  the  press  of  the 
Orange  party;  but  not  more  furious  than 
might  have  been  found  in  the  Morning  Post 
or  the  Saturday  Review.  Nevertheless,  there 
was  one  phrase  that  I  certainly  never  saw  in 
the  Morning  Post  or  the  Saturday  Review; 
one  phrase  I  should  never  expect  to  see  in  any 
English  paper,  though  I  might  very  probably 
see  it  in  a  Scotch  paper.  It  was  this  sentence, 
that  was  read  to  me  from  the  leading  article 
of  a  paper  in  Belfast:  "  There  never  was  trea- 
son yet  but  a  Campbell  was  at  the  bottom 
of  it." 

Let  anybody  imagine  an  Englishman  say- 
ing, about  some  business  quarrel,  "  How  like 
an  Atkins!"  or  "What  could  you  expect  of 
a  Wilkinson?"  A  moment's  reflection  will 
show  that  it  would  be  even  more  impossible 
touching  public  men  in  public  quarrels.  No 
English  Liberal  ever  connected  the  earlier  ex- 
ploits of  the  present  Lord  Birkenhead  with 
atavistic  influences,  or  the  totem  of  the  wide 
and  wandering  tribe  of  Smith.  No  English 
patriot  traced  back  the  family  tree  of  any 
English  pacifist;  or  said  there  was  never  trea- 


The  Family  and  the  Feud  57 

son  yet  but  a  Pringle  was  at  the  bottom  of  it. 
It  is  the  indefinite  article  that  is  here  the  def- 
inite distinction.  It  is  the  expression  "  a 
Campbell "  which  suddenly  transforms  the 
scene,  and  covers  the  robes  of  one  lawyer  with 
the  ten  thousand  tartans  of  a  whole  clan. 
Now  that  phrase  is  the  phrase  that  meets  the 
traveller  everywhere  in  Ireland.  Perhaps  the 
next  most  arresting  thing  I  remember,  after 
the  agrarian  revolution,  was  the  way  in  which 
one  poor  Irishman  happened  to  speak  to  me 
about  Sir  Roger  Casement.  He  did  not 
praise  him  as  a  deliverer  of  Ireland;  he  did 
not  abuse  him  as  a  disgrace  to  Ireland;  he 
did  not  say  anything  of  the  twenty  things  one 
might  expect  him  to  say.  He  merely  referred 
to  the  rumour  that  Casement  meant  to  become 
a  Catholic  just  before  his  execution,  and  ex- 
pressed a  sort  of  distant  interest  in  it.  He 
added :  ^'  He's  always  been  a  Black  Protes- 
tant. All  the  Casements  are  Black  Protes- 
tants." I  confess  that,  at  the  moment  of  that 
morbid  story,  there  seemed  to  me  to  be  some- 
thing unearthly  about  the  very  idea  of  there 
being  other  Casements.    If  ever  a  man  seemed 


58  Irish  Impressions 

solitary,  if  ever  a  man  seemed  unique  to  the 
point  of  being  unnatural,  it  was  that  man  on 
the  two  or  three  occasions  when  I  have  seen 
his  sombre  handsome  face  and  his  wild  eyes; 
a  tall,  dark  figure  walking  already  in  the 
shadow  of  a  dreadful  doom.  I  do  not  know 
if  he  was  a  Black  Protestant;  but  he  was  a 
black  something;  in  the  sad  if  not  the  bad 
sense  of  the  symbol.  I  fancy,  in  truth,  he 
stood  rather  for  the  third  of  Browning's  fa- 
mous triad  of  rhyming  monosyllables.  A  dis- 
tinguished Nationalist  Member,  who  hap- 
pened to  have  had  a  medical  training,  said 
to  me,  "  I  was  quite  certain  when  I  first 
clapped  eyes  on  him;  the  man  was  mad." 
Anj^how  the  man  was  so  unusual,  that  it  would 
never  have  occurred  to  me  or  any  of  my  coun- 
trymen to  talk  as  if  there  were  a  class  or  clan 
of  such  men.  I  could  almost  have  imagined 
he  had  been  born  without  father  or  mother. 
But  for  the  Irish,  his  father  and  mother  were 
really  more  important  than  he  was.  There 
is  said  to  be  a  historical  mystery  about 
whether  Parnell  made  a  pun,  when  he  said 
that  the  name  of  Kettle  was  a  household  word 


The  Family  and  the  Feud  59 

in  Ireland.  Few  symbols  could  now  be  more 
contrary  than  the  name  of  Kettle  and  the 
name  of  Casement  (save  for  the  courage  they 
had  in  common) ;  for  the  younger  Kettle,  who 
died  so  gloriously  in  France,  was  a  National- 
ist as  broad  as  the  other  was  cramped,  and  as 
sane  as  the  other  was  crazy.  But  if  the  fancy 
of  a  punster,  following  his  own  delightful 
vein  of  nonsense,  should  see  something  quaint 
in  the  image  of  a  hundred  such  Kettles  sing- 
ing as  he  sang  by  a  hundred  hearths,  a  more 
bitter  jester,  reading  that  black  and  obscure 
story  of  the  capture  on  the  coast,  might  utter 
a  similar  flippancy  about  other  Casements, 
opening  on  the  foam  of  such  very  perilous 
seas,  in  a  land  so  truly  forlorn.  But  even  if 
we  were  not  annoyed  at  the  pun,  we  should 
be  surprised  at  the  plural.  And  our  surprise 
would  be  the  measure  of  the  deepest  differ- 
ence between  England  and  Ireland.  To  ex- 
press it  in  the  same  idle  imagery  it  would  be 
the  fact  that  even  a  casement  is  a  part  of  a 
house,  as  a  kettle  is  a  part  of  a  household. 
Every  word  in  Irish  is  a  household  word. 
The  English  would  no  more  have  thought 


60  Iiish  Impressions 


of  a  plural  for  the  word  Gladstone  than  for 
the  word  God.    They  would  never  have  im- 
agined Disraeli  compassed  about  with  a  great 
cloud  of  Disraelis;  it  would  have  seemed  to 
them  altogether  too  Apocalyptic,  and  exag- 
geration of  being  on  the  side  of  the  angels. 
To  this  day  in  England,  as  I  have  reason  to 
know,  it  is  regarded  as  a  rabid  and  insane 
form  of  religious  persecution  to  suggest  that 
a  Jew  very  probably  comes  of  a  Jewish  fam- 
ily.    In    short,    the   modern    English,   while 
their  rulers  are  walling  to  give  due  consider- 
ation to  Eugenics  as  a   reasonable  opportu- 
nity for  various  forms  of  polygamy  and  in- 
fanticide,   are    drifting   farther   and    farther 
from  the  only  consideration  of  Eugenics  that 
could  possibly  be  fit  for  Christian  men,  the 
consideration  of  it  as  an  accomplished  fact. 
I  have  spoken  of  infanticide;  but  indeed  the 
ethic  involved  is  rather  that  of  parricide  and 
matricide.     To    my   own    taste,    the    present 
tendency  of  social  reform  would  seem  to  con- 
sist of  destroying  all  traces  of  the  parents,  in 
order  to  study  the  heredity  of  the  children. 
But  I  do  not  here  ask  the  reader  to  accept  my 


The  Family  and  the  Feud  61 

own  tastes  or  even  opinions  about  these  things; 
I  only  bear  witness  to  an  objective  fact  about 
a  foreign  country.  It  can  be  summed  up  by 
saying  that  Parnell  is  the  Parnell  for  the 
English;  but  a  Parnell  for  the  Irish. 

This  is  what  I  mean  when  I  say  that  Eng- 
lish Home  Rulers  do  not  know  what  the  Irish 
mean  by  home.  And  this  is  also  what  I  mean 
when  I  say  that  the  society  does  not  fit  into 
any  of  our  social  classifications,  liberal  or  con- 
servative. To  many  Radicals  this  sense  of 
lineage  will  appear  rank  reactionary  aristoc- 
racy. And  it  is  aristocratic,  if  we  mean  by 
this  a  pride  of  pedigree;  but  it  is  not  aristo- 
cratic in  the  practical  and  political  sense. 
Strange  as  it  may  sound,  its  practical  effect 
is  democratic.  It  is  not  aristocratic  in  the 
sense  of  creating  an  aristocracy.  On  the  con- 
trary, it  is  perhaps  the  one  force  that  perma- 
nently prevents  the  creation  of  an  aristocracy, 
in  the  manner  of  the  English  squirearchy. 
The  reason  of  this  apparent  paradox  can  be 
put  plainly  enough  in  one  sentence.  If  you 
are  really  concerned  about  your  relations,  you 
have  to  be  concerned  about  your  poor  rela- 


62  Irish  Impressions 

tions.  You  soon  discover  that  a  considerable 
number  of  your  second  cousins  exhibit  a 
strong  social  tendency  to  be  chimney-sweeps 
and  tinkers.  You  soon  learn  the  lesson  of  hu- 
man equality  if  you  try  honestly  and  consist- 
ently to  learn  any  other  lesson,  even  the  les- 
son of  heraldry  and  genealogy.  For  good  or 
evil,  a  real  working  aristocracy  has  to  forget 
about  three-quarters  of  its  aristocrats.  It  has 
to  discard  the  poor  who  have  the  genteel 
blood,  and  welcome  the  rich  who  can  live  the 
genteel  life.  If  a  man  is  interesting  because 
he  is  a  McCarthy,  it  is,  so  far,  as  he  is  inter- 
esting because  he  is  a  man;  that  is,  he  is  in- 
teresting whether  he  is  a  duke  or  a  dustman. 
But  if  he  is  interesting  because  he  is  Lord 
FitzArthur  and  lives  at  FitzArthur  House, 
then  he  is  interesting  when  he  has  merely 
bought  the  house,  or  when  he  has  merely 
bought  the  title.  To  maintain  a  squirearchy, 
it  is  necessary  to  admire  the  new  squire;  and 
therefore  to  forget  the  old  squire.  The  sense 
of  family  is  like  a  dog  and  follows  the  family; 
the  sense  of  oligarchy  is  like  a  cat  and  con- 
tinues to  haunt  the  house.     I  am  not  arguing 


The  Family  and  the  Feud  63 

against  aristocracy  if  the  English  choose  to 
preserve  it  in  England;  I  am  only  making 
clear  the  terms  on  which  they  hold  it,  and 
warning  them  that  a  people  with  a  strong 
family  sense  will  not  hold  it  on  any  terms. 
Aristocracy,  as  it  has  flourished  in  England 
since  the  Reformation,  with  not  a  little  na- 
tional glory  and  commercial  success,  is  in  its 
very  nature  built  up  of  broken  and  desecrated 
homes.  It  has  to  destroy  a  hundred  poor  re- 
lations to  keep  up  a  family.  It  has  to  destroy 
a  hundred  families  to  keep  up  a  class. 

But  if  this  family  spirit  is  incompatible 
with  what  we  mean  by  aristocracy,  it  is  quite 
as  incompatible  with  three-quarters  of  what 
many  men  praise  and  preach  as  democracy. 
The  whole  trend  of  what  has  been  regarded 
as  liberal  legislation  in  England,  necessary  or 
unnecessary,  defensible  and  indefensible,  has 
for  good  or  evil  been  at  the  expense  of  the 
independence  of  the  family,  especially  of  the 
poor  family.  From  the  first  most  reasonable 
restraints  of  the  Factory  Acts  to  the  last  most 
maniacal  antics  of  interference  with  other 
people's  nursery  games  or  Christmas  dinners, 


64  Irish  Impressions 

the  whole  process  has  turned  sometimes  on 
the  pivot  of  the  state,  more  often  on  the  pivot 
of  the  employer,  but  never  on  the  pivot  of  the 
home.  All  this  may  be  an  emancipation;  I 
only  point  out  that  Ireland  really  asked  for 
Home  Rule  chiefly  to  be  emancipated  from 
this  emancipation.  But  indeed  the  English 
politicians,  to  do  them  justice,  show  their  con- 
sciousness of  this  by  the  increasing  number  of 
cases  in  which  the  other  nation  is  exempted. 
We  may  have  harried  this  unhappy  people 
with  our  persecutions;  but  at  least  we  spare 
them  our  reforms.  We  have  smitten  them 
with  plagues ;  but  at  least  we  dare  not  scourge 
them  with  our  remedies.  The  real  case 
against  the  Union  is  not  merely  a  case  against 
the  Unionists;  it  is  a  far  stronger  case  against 
the  Universalists.  It  is  this  strange  and  ironic 
truth;  that  a  man  stands  up  holding  a  char- 
ter of  charity  and  peace  for  all  mankind; 
that  he  lays  down  a  law  of  enlightened  jus- 
tice for  all  the  nations  of  the  earth,  that  he 
claims  to  behold  man  from  the  beginnings  of 
his  evolution  equal,  without  any  difference 


The  Family  and  the  Feud  65 

between  the  most  distant  creeds  and  colours; 
that  he  stands  as  the  orator  of  the  human  race 
whose  statute  only  declares  all  humanity  to 
be  human;  and  then  slightly  drops  his  voice 
and  says,  "This  Act  shall  not  apply  to  Ire- 
land." 


IV — The  Paradox  of  Labour 


MY  first  general  and  visual  impression 
of  the  green  island  was  that  it  was 
not  green  but  brown;  that  it  was 
positively  brown  with  khaki.  This 
is  one  of  those  experiences  that  cannot  be  con- 
fused with  expectations;  the  sort  of  small 
thing  that  is  seen  but  not  foreseen  in  the  ver- 
bal visions  of  books  and  newspapers.  I  knew, 
of  course,  that  we  had  a  garrison  in  Dublin, 
but  I  had  no  notion  that  it  was  so  obvious  all 
over  Dublin.  I  had  no  notion  that  it  had 
been  considered  necessary  to  occupy  the  coun- 
try in  such  force,  or  with  so  much  parade 
of  force.  And  the  first  thought  that  flashed 
through  my  mind  found  words  in  the  single 
sentence:  "How  useful  these  men  would 
have  been  in  the  breach  at  St.  Quentin." 
For  I  went  to  Dublin  towards  the  end  of 

191 8,  and  not  long  after  those  awful  days 

m 


The  Paradox  of  Labour  67 

which  led  up  to  the  end  of  the  war,  and 
seemed  more  like  the  end  of  the  world.  There 
hung  still  in  the  imagination,  as  above  a  void 
of  horror,  that  line  that  was  the  last  chain  of 
the  world's  chivalry;  and  the  memory  of  the 
day  when  it  seemed  that  our  name  and  our 
greatness  and  our  glory  went  down  before  the 
annihilation  from  the  north.  Ireland  is 
hardly  to  blame  if  she  has  never  known  how 
noble  an  England  was  in  peril  in  that  hour; 
or  for  what  beyond  any  empire  we  were  trou- 
bled, when,  under  a  cloud  of  thick  darkness, 
we  almost  felt  her  ancient  foundations  move 
upon  the  floor  of  the  sea.  But  I,  as  an  Eng- 
lishman at  least,  knew  it;  and  it  was  for  Eng- 
land and  not  for  Ireland  that  I  felt  this  first 
impatience  and  tragic  irony.  I  had  always 
doubted  the  military  policy  that  culminated 
in  Irish  conscription,  and  merely  on  military 
grounds.  If  any  policy  of  the  English  could 
deserve  to  be  called  in  the  proverbial  sense 
Irish,  I  think  it  was  this  one.  It  was  wast- 
ing troops  in  Ireland  because  we  wanted 
them  in  France.  I  had  the  same  purely  pa- 
triotic and  even  pugnacious  sense  of  annoy- 


68  Irish  Impressions 

ance,  mingling  with  my  sense  of  pathos,  in 
the  sight  of  the  devastation  of  the  great  Dub- 
lin street,  which  had  been  bombarded  by  the 
British  troops  during  the  Easter  Rebellion. 
I  was  distressed  that  such  a  cannonade  had 
ever  been  aimed  at  the  Irish;  but  even  more 
distressed  that  it  had  not  been  aimed  at  the 
Germans.  The  question  of  the  necessity  of 
the  heavy  attack,  like  the  question  of  the  ne- 
cessity of  the  large  army  of  occupation,  is  of 
course  bound  up  with  the  history  of  the  Easter 
Rebellion  itself.  That  strange  and  dramatic 
event,  which  came  quite  as  unexpectedly  to 
Nationalist  Ireland  as  to  Unionist  England, 
is  no  part  of  my  own  experiences,  and  I  will 
not  dogmatise  on  so  dark  a  problem.  But  I 
will  say  in  passing  that  I  suspect  a  certain 
misunderstanding  of  its  very  nature  to  be  com- 
mon on  both  sides.  Everything  seems  to 
point  to  the  paradox  that  the  rebels  needed 
the  less  to  be  conquered,  because  they  were 
actually  aiming  at  being  conquered,  rather 
than  at  being  conquerors.  In  the  moral  sense 
they  w^ere  certainly  heroes,  but  I  doubt  If  they 
expected  to  be  conquering  heroes.    They  de- 


The  Paradox  of  Labour  69 

sired  to  be  in  the  Greek  and  literal  sense  mar- 
tyrs; they  wished  not  so  much  to  win  as  to 
witness.  They  thought  that  nothing  but  their 
dead  bodies  could  really  prove  that  Ireland 
was  not  dead.  How  far  this  sublime  and 
suicidal  ideal  was  really  useful  in  reviving 
national  enthusiasm,  it  is  for  Irishmen  to 
judge;  I  should  have  said  that  the  enthusiasm 
was  there  anyhow.  But  if  any  such  action  is 
based  on  international  hopes,  as  they  affect 
England  or  a  great  part  of  America,  it  seems 
to  me  it  is  founded  on  a  fallacy  about  the  facts. 
I  shall  have  occasion  to  note  many  English 
errors  about  the  Irish;  and  this  seems  to  me 
a  very  notable  Irish  error  about  the  English. 
If  we  are  often  utterly  mistaken  about  their 
mentality,  they  were  quite  equally  mistaken 
about  our  mistake.  And  curiously  enough, 
they  failed  through  not  knowing  the  one  com- 
pliment that  we  had  really  always  paid  them. 
Their  act  presupposed  that  Irish  courage 
needed  proof;  and  it  never  did.  I  have 
heard  all  the  most  horrible  nonsense  talked 
against  Ireland  before  the  war;  and  I  never 
heard  Englishmen  doubt  Irish  military  val- 


70  Irish  Impressions 

our.  What  they  did  doubt  was  Irish  polit- 
ical sanity.  It  will  be  seen  at  once  that  the 
Easter  action  could  only  disprove  the  preju- 
dice they  hadn't  got;  and  actually  confirmed 
the  prejudice  they  had  got.  The  charge 
against  the  Irishman  was  not  a  lack  of  bold- 
ness, but  rather  an  excess  of  it.  Men  were 
right  in  thinking  him  brave,  and  they  could 
not  be  more  right.  But  they  were  wrong  in 
thinking  him  mad,  and  they  had  an  excellent 
opportunity  to  be  more  wrong.  Then,  when 
the  attempt  to  fight  against  England  devel- 
oped by  its  own  logic  into  a  refusal  to  fight 
for  England,  men  took  away  the  number  they 
first  thought  of;  and  were  irritated  into  deny- 
ing w^hat  they  had  originally  never  dreamed 
of  doubting.  In  any  case,  this  was,  I  think, 
the  temper  in  which  the  minority  of  the  true 
Sinn  Feiners  sought  martyrdom.  I  for  one 
will  never  sneer  at  such  a  motive ;  but  it  would 
hardly  have  amounted  to  so  great  a  move- 
ment but  for  another  force  that  happened  to 
ally  itself  with  them.  It  is  for  the  sake  of 
this  that  I  have  here  begun  with  the  Easter 
tragedy  itself;  for  with  the  consideration  of 


The  Paradox  of  Labour  71 

this  we  come  to  the  paradox  of  Irish  Labour. 
Some  of  my  remarks  on  the  stability  and 
even  repose  of  a  peasant  society  may  seem  ex- 
aggerated in  the  light  of  a  Labour  agitation 
that  breaks  out  in  Ireland  as  elsewhere.  But 
I  have  particular  and  even  personal  reasons 
for  regarding  that  agitation  as  the  exception 
that  proves  the  rule.  It  was  the  background 
of  the  peasant  landscape  that  made  the  Dub- 
lin strike  the  peculiar  sort  of  drama  that  it 
was;  and  this  operated  in  two  ways:  first,  by 
isolating  the  industrial  capitalist  as  something 
exceptional  and  almost  fanatical;  and  second, 
by  reinforcing  the  proletariat  with  a  vague 
tradition  of  property.  My  own  sympathies 
were  all  with  Larkin  and  Connolly  as  against 
the  late  Mr.  Murphy;  but  it  is  curious  to 
note  that  even  Mr.  Murphy  was  quite  a  dif- 
ferent kind  of  man  from  the  Lord  Something 
who  is  the  head  of  a  commercial  combine  in 
England.  He  was  much  more  like  some 
morbid  prince  of  the  fifteenth  century,  full  of 
cold  anger,  not  without  perverted  piety.  But 
the  first  few  words  I  heard  about  him  in  Ire- 
land were  full  of  that  vast,  vague  fact  which 


72  Irish  Impressions 

I  have  tried  to  put  first  among  my  impres- 
sions. I  have  called  it  the  family;  but  it  cov- 
ers many  cognate  things:  youth  and  old 
friendships,  not  to  mention  old  quarrels.  It 
might  be  more  fully  defined  as  a  realism 
about  origins.  The  first  things  I  heard  about 
Murphy  were  facts  of  his  forgotten  youth, 
or  a  youth  that  would  in  England  have  been 
forgotten.  They  were  tales  about  friends  of 
his  poorer  days,  with  whom  he  had  set  out 
to  push  some  more  or  less  sentimental  ven- 
detta against  somebody.  Suppose  whenever 
we  talked  of  Harrod's  Stores  we  heard  first 
about  the  boyish  day-dreams  of  Harrod. 
Suppose  the  mention  of  Bradshaw's  Railway 
Guide  brought  up  tales  of  feud  and  first  love 
in  the  early  life  of  Mr.  Bradshaw,  or  even  of 
Mrs.  Bradshaw.  That  is  the  atmosphere,  to 
be  felt  rather  than  described,  that  a  stranger 
in  Ireland  feels  around  him.  English  jour- 
nalism and  gossip,  dealing  with  English  busi- 
ness men,  are  often  precise  about  the  present 
and  prophetic  about  the  future,  but  seldom 
communicative  about  the  past;  et  pour  cause. 
They  will  tell  us  where  the  capitalist  is  going 


The  Paradox  of  Labour  73 

to,  as  to  the  House  of  Lords,  or  to  Monte 
Carlo,  or  inferentially  to  heaven;  but  they  say 
as  little  as  possible  about  where  he  comes 
from.  In  Ireland  a  man  carries  the  family 
mansion  about  with  him  like  a  snail;  and  his 
father's  ghost  follows  him  like  his  shadow. 
Everything  good  and  bad  that  could  be  said 
was  said,  not  only  about  Murphy  but  about 
Murphys.  An  anecdote  of  the  old  Irish  Par- 
liament describes  an  orator  as  gracefully  al- 
luding to  the  presence  of  an  opponent's  sis- 
ter in  the  Ladies'  Caller}^,  by  praying  that 
wrath  overtake  the  whole  accursed  generation 
"  from  the  toothless  old  hag  who  is  grinning 
in  the  gallery  to  the  white-livered  poltroon 
who  is  shivering  on  the  floor."  The  story  is 
commonly  told  as  suggesting  the  rather  wild 
disunion  of  Irish  parties;  but  it  is  quite  as 
serious  a  suggestion  of  the  union  of  Irish  fam- 
ilies. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  great  Dublin 
Strike,  a  conflagration  of  which  the  embers 
were  still  glowing  at  the  time  of  my  visit,  in- 
volved another  episode  which  illustrates  once 
again  this  recurrent  principle  of  the  reality  of 


74  Irish  Impressions 


the  family  in  Ireland.  Some  English  Social- 
ists, it  may  be  remembered,  moved  by  an  hon- 
ourable pity  for  the  poor  families  starving 
during  the  strike,  made  a  proposal  for  taking 
the  children  away  and  feeding  them  properly 
in  England.  I  should  have  thought  the  more 
natural  course  would  have  been  to  give  money 
or  food  to  the  parents.  But  the  philan- 
thropists, being  English  and  being  Socialists, 
probably  had  a  trust  in  what  is  called  organ- 
isation and  a  distrust  of  what  is  called  char- 
ity. It  is  supposed  that  charity  makes  a  man 
dependent;  though  in  fact  charity  makes  him 
independent,  as  compared  with  the  dreary 
dependence  usually  produced  by  organisation. 
Charity  gives  property,  and  therefore  liberty. 
There  is  manifestly  much  more  emancipation 
in  giving  a  beggar  a  shilling  to  spend,  than 
in  sending  an  official  after  him  to  spend  it  for 
him.  The  Socialists,  however,  had  placidly 
arranged  for  the  deportation  of  all  the  poor 
children,  when  they  found  themselves,  to  their 
astonishment,  confronted  with  the  red-hot 
reality  called  the  religion  of  Ireland.  The 
priests  and  the  families  of  the  faithful  organ- 


The  Paradox  of  Labour  75 

ised  themselves  for  a  furious  agitation,  on  the 
ground  that  the  faith  would  be  lost  in  for- 
eign and  heretical  homes.  They  were  not 
satisfied  with  the  assurance,  which  some  of 
the  Socialists  earnestly  offered,  that  the  faith 
would  not  be  tampered  with;  and  as  a  matter 
of  clear  thinking,  I  think  they  were  quite 
right.  Those  who  offer  such  a  reassurance 
have  never  thought  about  what  a  religion  is. 
They  entertain  the  extraordinary  idea  that  re- 
ligion is  a  topic.  They  think  religion  is  a 
thing  like  radishes,  which  can  be  avoided 
throughout  a  particular  conversation  with  a 
particular  person,  whom  the  mention  of  a 
radish  may  convulse  with  anger  or  agony. 
But  a  religion  is  simply  the  world  a  man 
inhabits.  In  practice,  a  Socialist  living  in 
Liverpool  would  not  know  when  he  was,  or 
was  not  tampering  with  the  religion  of  a  child 
born  in  Louth.  If  I  were  given  the  complete 
control  of  an  infant  Parsee  (which  is  fortu- 
nately unlikely)  I  should  not  have  the  remot- 
est notion  of  when  I  was  most  vitally  reflect- 
ing on  the  Parsee  system.  But  common 
sense,  and  a  comprehension  of  the  meaning 


76  Irish  Impressions 

of  a  coherent  philosophy,  would  lead  me  to 
suspect  that  I  was  reflecting  on  it  every  other 
minute.  But  I  mention  the  matter  here,  not 
in  order  to  enter  into  any  of  these  disputes, 
but  to  give  yet  another  example  of  the  way 
in  which  the  essentially  domestic  organisation 
of  Ireland  will  always  rise  in  rebellion  against 
any  other  organisation.  There  is  something 
of  a  parable  in  the  tales  of  the  old  evictions, 
in  which  the  whole  family  was  besieged  and 
resisted  together  and  the  mothers  emptied 
boiling  kettles  on  the  besiegers;  for  any  offi- 
cial who  interferes  with  them  will  certainly 
get  into  hot  water.  We  cannot  separate 
mothers  and  children  in  that  strange  land; 
we  can  only  return  to  some  of  our  older  his- 
torical methods,  and  massacre  them  together. 
A  small  incident  within  my  own  short  ex- 
perience, however,  illustrated  the  main  point 
involved  here;  the  sense  of  a  peasant  base, 
even  of  the  proletarian  attack.  And  this  was 
exemplified  not  in  any  check  to  Labour, 
but  rather  in  a  success  for  Labour,  in  so 
far  as  the  issue  of  a  friendly  and  informal 
debate  may  be  classed  with  its  more  solid  sue- 


The  Paradox  of  Labour  77 

cesses.  The  business  originally  began  with  a 
sort  of  loose-jointed  literary  lecture  which  I 
gave  in  the  Dublin  Theatre,  in  connection 
with  which  I  only  mention  two  incidents  in 
passing,  because  they  both  struck  me  as  pecu- 
liarly native  and  national.  One  concerned 
only  the  title  of  my  address,  which  was 
"  Poetry  and  Property."  An  educated  Eng- 
lish gentleman,  who  happened  to  speak  to  me 
before  the  meeting,  said  with  the  air  of  one 
who  foresees  that  such  jokes  will  be  the  death 
of  him,  "  Well,  I  have  simply  given  up  puz- 
zling about  what  you  can  possibly  mean,  by 
talking  about  poetry  as  something  to  do  with 
property."  He  probably  regarded  the  com- 
bination of  words  as  a  mere  alliterative  fan- 
tasy, like  Peacocks  and  Paddington,  or  Polyg- 
amy and  Potatoes;  if  indeed  he  did  not  regard 
it  as  a  mere  combination  of  incompatible  con- 
trasts, like  Popery  and  Protestants,  or  Patriot- 
ism and  Politicians.  On  the  same  day  an 
Irishman  of  similar  social  standing  remarked 
quite  carelessly,  "  I've  just  seen  your  subject 
for  to-morrow.  I  suppose  the  Socialists  won't 
agree  with  you,"  or  words  to  that  effect.    The 


78  Irish  Impressions 

two  terms  told  him  at  once,  not  about  the  lec- 
ture (which  was  literary  if  it  was  anything), 
but  about  the  whole  philosophy  underlying 
the  lecture;  the  whole  of  that  philosophy 
which  the  lumbering  elephant  called  by  Mr. 
Shaw  the  Chester-Belloc  laboriously  toils  to 
explain  in  England,  under  the  ponderous 
title  of  Distributivism.  As  Mr.  Hugh  Law 
once  said,  equally  truly,  about  our  pitting  of 
patriotism  against  imperialism,  "What  is  a 
paradox  in  England  is  a  commonplace  in  Ire- 
land." My  actual  monologue,  however,  dealt 
merely  with  the  witness  of  poetry  to  a  certain 
dignity  in  man's  sense  of  private  possessions, 
which  is  certainly  not  either  vulgar  ostenta- 
tion or  vulgar  greed.  The  French  poet  of 
the  Pleiade  remembers  the  slates  on  his  own 
roof  almost  as  if  he  could  count  them;  and 
Mr.  W.  B.  Yeats,  in  the  very  wildest  vision 
of  a  loneliness  remote  and  irresponsible,  is 
careful  to  make  it  clear  that  he  knows  how 
many  bean-rows  make  nine.  Of  course  there 
were  people  of  all  parties  in  the  theatre,  wild 
Sinn  Feiners  and  conventional  Unionists,  but 
they  all  listened  to  my  remarks  as  naturally 


The  Paradox  of  Labour  75i 

as  they  might  have  all  listened  to  an  equally 
incompetent  lecture  on  Monkeys  or  on  the 
Mountains  of  the  Moon.  There  was  not  a 
word  of  politics,  least  of  all  party  politics,  in 
that  particular  speech;  it  was  concerned  with 
a  tradition  in  art,  or  at  the  most,  in  abstract 
ethics.  But  the  one  amusing  thing  which 
makes  me  recall  the  whole  incident  was  this; 
that  when  I  had  finished,  a  stalwart,  hearty, 
heavy  sort  of  legal  gentleman,  a  well-known 
Irish  judge  I  understand,  was  kind  enough  to 
move  a  vote  of  thanks  to  me.  And  what 
amused  me  about  him  was  this :  that  while  I, 
who  am  a  Radical  in  sympathy  with  the  rev- 
olutionary legend,  had  delivered  a  mild  essay 
on  minor  poets  to  a  placid  if  bored  audience, 
the  judge,  who  was  a  pillar  of  the  Castle  and 
a  Conservative  sworn  to  law  and  order,  pro- 
ceeded with  the  utmost  energy  and  joy  to  raise 
a  riot.  He  taunted  the  Sinn  Feiners  and 
dared  them  to  come  out;  he  trailed  his  coat 
if  ever  a  man  trailed  it  in  this  world ;  he  glori- 
fied England;  not  the  Allies,  but  England; 
splendid  England,  sublime  England  (all  in 
the  broadest  brogue),  just,  wise,  and  merciful 


80  Irish  Impressions 

England,  and  so  on,  flourishing  what  was  not 
even  the  flag  of  his  own  country,  and  a  thing 
that  had  not  the  remotest  connection  with  the 
subject  in  hand,  any  more  than  the  Great 
Wall  of  China.  I  need  not  say  that  the  thea- 
tre was  soon  in  a  roar  of  protests  and  repar- 
tees; which  I  suppose  was  what  he  wanted. 
He  was  a  jolly  old  gentleman;  and  I  liked 
him.  But  what  interested  me  about  him  was 
this;  and  it  is  of  some  importance  in  the  un- 
derstanding of  his  nationality.  That  sort  of 
man  exists  in  England;  I  know  and  like  scores 
of  him.  Often  he  is  a  major;  often  a  squire; 
sometimes  a  judge;  very  occasionally  a  dean. 
Such  a  man  talks  the  most  ridiculous  reaction- 
ary nonsense  in  an  apoplectic  fashion  over  his 
own  port  wine;  and  occasionally  in  a  some- 
what gasping  manner  at  an  avowedly  polit- 
ical meeting.  But  precisely  what  the  English 
gentleman  would  not  do,  and  the  Irish  gen- 
tleman did  do,  would  be  to  make  a  scene  on 
a  non-political  occasion;  when  all  he  had  to 
do  was  to  move  a  formal  vote  of  thanks  to  a 
total  stranger  who  was  talking  about  Ithaca 
and     Innisfree.     An     English    Conservative 


The  Paradox  of  Labour  81 

would  be  less  likely  to  do  it  than  an  English 
Radical.  The  same  thing  that  makes  him 
conventionally  political  would  make  him  con- 
ventionally non-political.  He  would  hate  to 
make  too  serious  a  speech  on  too  social  an 
occasion,  as  he  would  hate  to  be  in  morning- 
dress  when  every  one  else  was  in  evening- 
dress.  And  whatever  coat  he  wore  he  cer- 
tainly would  not  trail  it  solely  in  order  to  make 
a  disturbance,  as  did  that  jolly  Irish  judge. 
He  taught  me  that  the  Irishman  is  never  so 
Irish^  as  when  he  is  English.  He  was  very 
like  some  of  the  Sinn  Feiners  who  shouted 
him  down;  and  he  would  be  pleased  to  know 
that  he  helped  me  to  understand  them  with 
a  greater  sympathy. 

I  have  wandered  from  the  subject  in  speak- 
ing of  this  trifle,  thinking  it  worth  while  to 
note  the  positive  and  provocative  quality  of 
all  Irish  opinion;  but  it  was  my  purpose  only 
to  mention  this  small  dispute  as  leading  up 
to  another.  I  had  some  further  talk  about 
poetry  and  property  with  Mr.  Yeats  at  the 
Dublin  Arts  Club;  and  here  again  I  am 
tempted  to  irrelevant,  but  for  me  interesting 


.y 


82  Irish  Impressions 

matters.  For  I  am  conscious  throughout  of 
saying  less  than  I  could  wish  of  a  thousand 
things,  my  omission  of  which  is  not  altogether 
thoughtless,  far  less  thankless.  There  have 
been  and  will  be  better  sketches  than  mine  of 
all  that  attractive  society,  the  paradox  of  an 
intelligentsia  that  is  intelligent.  I  could  write 
a  great  deal,  not  only  about  those  I  value  as 
my  own  friends,  like  Katherine  Tynan  or 
Stephen  Gwynn,  but  about  men  with  whom 
my  meeting  was  all  too  momentary;  about  the 
elvish  energy  conveyed  by  Mr.  James  Ste- 
phens; the  social  greatness  of  Dr.  Gogarty, 
who  was  like  a  literary  legend  of  the  eight- 
eenth century;  of  the  unique  universalism  of 
A.  E.,  who  has  something  of  the  presence  of 
William  Morris,  and  a  more  transcendental 
type  of  the  spiritual  hospitality  of  Walt  Whit- 
man. But  I  am  not  in  this  rough  sketch  try- 
ing to  tell  Irishmen  what  they  know  already, 
but  trying  to  tell  Englishmen  some  of  the 
large  and  simple  things  that  they  do  not  know. 
The  large  matter  concerned  here  Is  Labour; 
and  I  have  only  paused  upon  the  other  points 
because  they  were  the  steps  which  accidentally 


The  Paradox  of  Labour  §3 

led  up  to  my  first  meeting  with  this  great 
force.  And  it  was  none  the  less  a  fact  in  sup- 
port of  my  argument,  because  it  was  some- 
thing of  a  joke  against  myself. 

On  the  occasion  I  have  mentioned,  a  most 
exhilarating  evening  at  the  Arts  Club,  Mr. 
Yeats  asked  me  to  open  a  debate  at  the  Abbey 
Theatre,  defending  property  on  its  more 
purely  political  side.  My  opponent  was  one 
of  the  ablest  of  the  leaders  of  Liberty  Hall, 
the  famous  stronghold  of  Labour  politics  in 
Dublin,  Mr.  Johnson,  an  Englishman  like  my- 
self, but  one  deservedly  popular  with  the  pro- 
letarian Irish.  He  made  a  most  admirable 
speech,  to  which  I  mean  no  disparagement 
when  I  say  that  I  think  his  personal  popu- 
larity had  even  more  weight  than  his  personal 
eloquence.  My  own  argument  was  confined 
to  the  particular  value  of  small  property  as 
a  weapon  of  militant  democracy;  and  was 
based  on  the  idea  that  the  citizen  resisting 
injustice  could  find  no  substitute  for  private 
property,  for  every  other  impersonal  power, 
however  democratic  in  theory,  must  be  bu- 
reaucratic in  form.     I  said,  as  a  flippant  fig- 


84  Irish  Impressions 


ure  of  speech,  that  committing  property  to 
any  officials,  even  guild  officials,  was  like  hav- 
ing to  leave  one's  legs  in  the  cloakroom  along 
v^ith  one's  stick  or  umbrella.     The  point  is 
that  a  man  may  want  his  legs  at  any  minute, 
to  kick  a  man  or  to  dance  with  a  lady;  and 
recovering  them  may  be  postponed  by  any 
hitch,  from  the  loss  of  the  ticket  to  the  crim- 
inal flight  of  the  official.     So  in  a  social  cri- 
sis, such  as  a  strike,  a  m.an  must  be  ready  to 
act  without  officials  who  may  hamper  or  be- 
tray him;  and  I  asked  whether  many  more 
strikes  would  not  have  been  successful,  if  each 
striker  had  owned  so  much  as  a  kitchen  gar- 
den to  help  him  to  live.     My  opponent  re- 
plied that  he  had  always  been  in  favour  of 
such  a  reserve  of  proletarian  property,  but 
preferred  it  to  be  communal  rather  than  indi- 
vidual ;  which  seems  to  me  to  leave  my  argu- 
ment where  it  was;  for  what  is  communal 
must  be  official,   unless  it  is  to  be  chaotic. 
Two  minor  jokes,  somewhat  at  my  expense, 
remain   in   my  memory;    I    appear   to   have 
caused  some  amusement  by  cutting  a  pencil 
with   a  very  large   Spanish  knife,  which   I 


The  Paradox  of  Labour  85 

value  (as  it  happens)  as  the  gift  of  an  Irish 
priest  who  is  a  friend  of  mine,  and  which  may 
therefore  also  be  regarded  as  a  symbolic 
weapon,  a  sort  of  sword  of  the  spirit.  Whether 
the  audience  thought  I  was  about  to  ampu- 
tate my  own  legs  in  illustration  of  my  own 
metaphor,  or  that  I  was  going  to  cut  Mr. 
Johnson's  throat  in  fury  at  finding  no  reply 
to  his  arguments,  I  do  not  know.  The  other 
thing  which  struck  me  as  funny  was  an  excel- 
lent retort  by  Mr.  Johnson  himself,  who  had 
said  something  about  the  waste  of  property  on 
guns,  and  who  interrupted  my  remark  that 
there  would  never  be  a  good  revolution  with- 
out guns,  by  humorously  calling  out,  "  Trea- 
son." As  I  told  him  afterwards,  few  scenes 
would  be  more  artistic  than  that  of  an  Eng- 
lishman, sent  over  to  recruit  for  the  British 
army,  being  collared  and  given  up  to  justice 
(or  injustice)  by  a  Pacifist  from  Liberty 
Hall.  But  all  throughout  the  proceedings  I 
was  conscious,  as  I  say,  of  a  very  real  popular 
feeling  supporting  the  mere  personality  of  my 
opponent;  as  in  the  ovation  he  received  before 
he  spoke  at  all,  or  the  applause  given  to  a 


86  Irish  Impressions 

number  of  his  topical  asides,  allusions  which 
I  could  not  always  understand.  After  the 
meeting  a  distinguished  Southern  Unionist, 
who  happens  to  own  land  outside  Dublin,  said 
to  me,  "  Of  course,  Johnson  has  just  had  a 
huge  success  in  his  work  here.  Liberty  Hall 
has  just  done  something  that  has  really  never 
been  done  before  in  the  whole  Trade  Union 
movement.  He  has  really  managed  to  start 
a  Trade  Union  for  agricultural  labourers.  I 
know,  because  I've  had  to  meet  their  demands. 
You  know  how  utterly  impossible  it  has  al- 
ways been  really  to  found  a  union  of  agricul- 
tural labourers  in  England."  I  did  know  it; 
and  I  also  knew  why  it  had  been  possible  to 
found  one  in  Ireland.  It  had  been  possible 
for  the  very  reason  I  had  been  urging  all  the 
evening;  that  behind  the  Irish  proletariat 
there  had  been  the  tradition  of  an  Irish  peas- 
antry. In  their  families,  if  not  in  themselves, 
there  had  been  some  memory  of  the  personal 
love  of  the  land.  But  it  seemed  to  me  an  in- 
teresting irony  that  even  my  own  defeat  was 
an  example  of  my  own  doctrine;  and  that  the 
truth  on  my  side  was  proved  by  the  popular- 


The  Paradox  of  Labour  $7 

ity  of  the  other  side.  The  agricultural  guild 
was  due  to  a  wind  of  freedom  that  came  into 
that  dark  city  from  very  distant  fields;  and 
the  truth  that  even  these  rolling  stones  of 
homeless  proletarianism  had  been  so  lately 
loosened  from  the  very  roots  of  the  moun- 
tains. 

In  Ireland  even  the  industrialism  is  not  in- 
dustrial. That  is  what  I  mean  by  saying  that 
Irish  Labour  is  the  exception  that  proves  the 
rule.  That  is  why  it  does  not  contradict  my 
former  generalisation  that  our  capitalist  crisis 
is  on  the  English  side  of  the  road.  The  Irish 
agricultural  labourers  can  become  guildsmen 
because  they  would  like  to  become  peasants. 
They  think  of  rich  and  poor  in  the  manner 
that  is  as  old  as  the  world;  the  manner  of 
Ahab  and  Naboth.  It  matters  little  in  a  peas- 
ant society  whether  Ahab  takes  the  vineyard 
privately  as  Ahab  or  officially  as  King  of 
Israel.  It  will  matter  as  little  in  the  long 
run,  even  in  the  other  kind  of  society,  whether 
Naboth  has  a  wage  to  work  in  the  vineyard^ 
or  a  vote  that  is  supposed  in  some  way  to  af- 
fect the  vineyard.    What  he  desires  to  have  is 


88'  Irish  Impressions 

the  vineyard;  and  not  in  apologetic  cynicism 
or  vulgar  evasions  that  business  is  business, 
but  in  thunder,  as  from  a  secret  throne  comes 
the  awful  voice  out  of  the  vineyard ;  the  voice 
of  this  manner  of  man  in  every  age  and  na- 
tion: "The  Lord  forbid  that  I  should  give 
the  inheritance  of  my  fathers  unto  thee." 


V — The  Englishman  in  Ireland 


ITH  no  desire  to  decorate  my 
travels  with  too  tall  a  traveller's 
tale,  I  must  record  the  fact  that 
I  found  one  point  upon  w^hich  all 
Irishmen  were  agreed.  It  was  the  fact  that, 
for  some  reason  or  other,  there  had  been  a 
very  hopeful  beginning  of  Irish  volunteer- 
ing at  the  beginning  of  the  war;  and  that,  for 
some  reason  or  other,  this  had  failed  in  the 
course  of  the  war.  The  reasons  alleged  dif- 
fered widely  with  the  moods  of  men;  some 
had  regarded  the  beginnings  with  hope  and 
some  with  suspicion;  some  had  lived  to  re- 
gard the  failure  with  a  bitter  pleasure,  and 
some  with  a  generous  pain.  The  different 
factions  gave  different  explanations  of  why 
the  thing  had  stopped;  but  they  all  agreed 
that  it  had  begun.     The  Sinn  Feiner  said  that 

the  people  soon  found  they  had  been  lured 

89 


90  Irish  Impressions 

I  r.wiiii— ■■■■■■11  -P  ■!  II.  --.I— —  I..  II  ■.■■■■■miiiiiiM  ■-■!  ,1^ 

into  a  Saxon  trap,  set  for  them  by  smooth, 
subservient  Saxons  like  Mr.  Devlin  and  Mr. 
Tim  Healy.  The  Belfast  citizen  suggested 
that  the  Popish  priest  had  terrorised  the  peas- 
ants when  they  tried  to  enlist,  producing  a 
thumbscrew  from  his  pocket  and  a  portable 
rack  from  his  handbag.  The  Parliamentary 
Nationalist  blamed  both  Sinn  Fein  and  the 
persecution  of  Sinn  Fein.  The  British  Gov- 
ernment officials,  if  they  did  not  exactly  blame 
themselves,  at  least  blamed  each  other.  The 
ordinary  Southern  Unionist  (who  played 
many  parts  of  a  more  or  less  sensible  sort,  in- 
cluding that  of  a  Home  Ruler)  generally 
agreed  with  the  ordinary  Nationalist  that  the 
Government's  recruiting  methods  had  been  as 
bad  as  its  cause  was  good.  But  it  is  manifest 
that  multitudes  at  the  beginning  of  the  war 
thought  it  really  had  a  very  good  cause;  and 
moreover  a  very  good  chance. 

The  extraordinary  story  of  how  that  chance 
was  lost  may  find  mention  on  a  later  page. 
I  will  begin  by  touching  on  the  first  incident 
that  befell  me  personally  in  connection  with 
the  same  enterprise.     I  went  to  Ireland  at  the 


The  Englishman  in  Ireland  91 

request  of  Irish  friends  who  were  working 
warmly  for  the  Allied  cause,  and  who  con- 
ceived (I  fear  in  far  too  flattering  a  spirit) 
that  I  might  at  least  be  useful  as  an  English- 
man who  had  always  sympathised  as  warmly 
with  the  Irish  cause.  I  am  under  no  illusions 
that  I  should  ever  be  efficient  at  such  work 
in  any  case;  and  under  the  circumstances  I 
had  no  great  hopes  of  doing  much,  where  men 
like  Sir  Horace  Plunkett  and  Captain  Ste- 
phen Gwynne,  far  more  competent,  more  self- 
sacrificing,  and  more  well-informed  than  I, 
could  already  do  comparatively  little.  It  was 
too  late.  A  hundredth  part  of  the  brilliant 
constancy  and  tragic  labours  of  these  men 
might  easily,  at  the  beginning  of  the  war, 
have  given  us  a  great  Irish  army.  I  need 
not  explain  the  motives  that  made  me  do  the 
little  I  could  do;  they  were  the  same  that  at 
that  moment  made  millions  of  better  men  do 
masses  of  better  work.  Physical  accident  pre- 
vented my  being  useful  in  France,  and  a  sort 
of  psychological  accident  seemed  to  suggest 
that  I  might  possibly  be  useful  in  Ireland; 
but  I  did  not  see  myself  as  a  very  serious 


92  Irish  Iinjjressions 

figure  in  either  field.  Nothing  could  be  seri- 
ous in  such  a  case  except  perhaps  a  convic- 
tion; and  at  least  my  conviction  about  the 
great  war  has  never  wavered  by  a  hair. 
Delenda  est — and  it  is  typical  of  the  power  of 
Berlin  that  one  must  break  ofif  for  want  of  a 
Latin  name  for  it.  Being  an  Englishman,  I 
hoped  primarily  to  help  England;  but  not 
being  a  congenital  idiot,  I  did  not  primarily 
ask  an  Irishman  to  help  England.  There  was 
obviously  something  much  more  reasonable 
to  ask  him  to  do.  I  hope  I  should  in  any 
case  have  done  my  best  for  my  own  country. 
But  the  cause  was  more  than  any  country; 
in  a  sense  it  was  too  good  for  any  country. 
The  Allies  were  more  right  than  they  real- 
ised. Nay,  they  hardly  had  a  right  to  be  so 
right  as  they  were.  The  modern  Babylon  of 
capitalistic  states  was  hardly  worthy  to  go  on 
such  a  crusade  against  the  heathen;  as  per- 
haps decadent  Byzantium  was  hardly  worthy 
to  defend  the  Cross  against  the  Crescent.  But 
we  are  glad  that  it  did  defend  the  Cross 
against  the  Crescent.  Nobody  is  sorry  that 
Sobieski  relieved  Vienna;  nobody  wishes  that 


The  Englishman  in  Ireland  93 

Alfred  had  not  won  in  Wessex.  The  cause 
that  conquered  Is  the  only  cause  that  survived. 
We  see  now  that  its  enemy  was  not  a  cause 
but  a  chaos;  and  that  is  what  history  will  say 
of  the  strange  and  recent  boiling  up  of  bar- 
baric imperialism,  a  whirlpool  whose  hollow 
centre  was  Berlin.  This  is  where  the  extreme 
Irish  were  really  wrong;  perhaps  really 
wrong  for  the  first  time.  I  entirely  sympa- 
thise with  their  being  in  revolt  against  the 
British  Government.  I  am  in  revolt  in  most 
ways  against  the  British  Government  myself. 
But  politics  are  a  fugitive  thing  in  the  face 
of  history.  Does  anybody  want  to  be  fixed 
for  ever  on  the  wrong  side  at  the  Battle  of 
Marathon,  through  a  quarrel  with  some 
Archon  whose  very  name  is  forgotten?  Does 
anybody  want  to  be  remembered  as  a  friend 
of  Attila,  through  a  breach  of  friendship  with 
^tius?  In  any  case,  it  was  with  a  profound 
conviction  that  if  Prussia  won,  Europe  must 
perish,  and  that  if  Europe  perished  England 
and  Ireland  must  perish  together,  that  I  went 
to  Dublin  in  those  dark  days  of  the  last  year 
of  the  war;  and  it  so  happened  that  the  first 


94  Irish  Impressions 

occasion  when  I  was  called  upon  for  any  ex- 
pression of  opinion  was  at  a  very  pleasant 
luncheon  party  given  to  the  representatives  of 
the  British  Dominions,  who  were  then  on  an 
official  tour  in  the  country  inspecting  its  con- 
ditions. What  I  said  is  of  no  importance 
except  as  leading  up  to  later  events;  but  it 
may  be  noted  that  though  I  was  speaking 
perhaps  indirectly  to  Irishmen,  I  was  speak- 
ing directly,  if  not  to  Englishmen,  at  least  to 
men  in  the  more  English  tradition  of  the  ma- 
jority of  the  Colonies.  I  was  speaking,  if  not 
to  Unionists,  at  least  largely  to  Imperialists. 
Now  I  have  forgotten,  I  am  happy  to  say, 
the  particular  speech  that  I  made,  but  I  can 
repeat  the  upshot  of  it  here,  not  only  as  part 
of  the  argument,  but  as  part  of  the  story. 
The  line  I  took  generally  in  Ireland  was  an 
appeal  to  the  Irish  principle,  yet  the  reverse 
of  a  mere  approval  of  the  Irish  action,  or  in- 
action. It  postulated  that  while  the  English 
had  missed  a  great  opportunity  of  justifying 
themselves  to  the  Irish,  the  Irish  had  also 
missed  a  similar  opportunity  of  justifying 
themselves  to  the  English.     But  it  specially 


The  Englishman  in  Ireland  95 

emphasised  this;  that  what  had  been  lost  was 
not  primarily  a  justification  against  England, 
but  a  joke  against  England.  I  pointed  out 
that  an  Irishman  missing  a  joke  against  an 
Englishman  was  a  tragedy,  like  a  lost  battle. 
And  there  was  one  thing,  and  one  thing  only, 
which  had  stopped  the  Irishman  from  laugh- 
ing, and  saved  the  Englishman  from  being 
laughable.  The  one  and  only  thing  that  res- 
cued England  from  ridicule  was  Sinn  Fein. 
Or,  at  any  rate,  that  element  in  Sinn  Fein 
which  was  pro-German,  or  refused  to  be 
anti-German.  Nothing  imaginable  under  the 
stars  except  a  pro-German  Irishman  could  at 
that  moment  have  saved  the  face  of  a  (very 
recently)  pro-German  Englishman. 

The  reason  for  this  is  obvious  enough. 
England  in  1914  encountered  or  discovered 
a  colossal  crime  of  Prussianised  Germany. 
But  England  could  not  discover  the  German 
crime  without  discovering  the  English  blun- 
der. The  blunder  was,  of  course,  a  perfectly 
plain  historical  fact;  that  England  made 
Prussia.  England  was  the  historic,  highly 
civilised  western  state,  with  Roman  founda- 


96  Irish  Impressions 

tions  and  chivalric  memories;  Prussia  was 
originally  a  petty  and  boorish  principality 
used  by  England  and  Austria  in  the  long 
struggle  against  the  greatness  of  France. 
Now  in  that  long  struggle  Ireland  had  always 
been  on  the  side  of  France.  She  had  only 
to  go  on  being  on  the  side  of  France,  and  the 
Latin  tradition  generally,  to  behold  her  own 
truth  triumph  over  her  own  enemies.  In  a 
word,  it  was  not  a  question  of  whether  Ire- 
land should  become  anti-German,  but  merely 
of  whether  she  should  continue  to  be  anti- 
German.  It  was  a  question  of  whether  she 
should  suddenly  become  pro-German,  at  the 
moment  when  most  other  pro-Germans  were 
discovering  that  she  had  been  justified  all 
along.  But  England,  at  the  beginning  of  her 
last  and  most  lamentable  quarrel  with  Ire- 
land, was  by  no  means  in  so  strong  a  contro- 
versial position.  England  was  right;  but  she 
could  only  prove  she  was  right  by  proving 
she  was  wrong.  In  one  sense,  and  with  all 
respect  to  her  right  action  in  the  matter,  she 
had  to  be  ridiculous  in  order  to  be  right. 
But  the  joke  against  the  English  was  even 


The  Englishman  in  Ireland  97 

more  obvious  and  topical.  And  as  mine  was 
only  meant  for  a  light  speech  after  a  friendly 
lunch,  I  took  the  joke  in  its  lightest  and  most 
fanciful  form,  and  touched  chiefly  on  the  fan- 
tastic theory  of  the  Teuton  as  the  master  of 
the  Celt.  For  the  supreme  joke  was  this: 
that  the  Englishman  has  not  only  boasted  of 
being  an  Englishman;  he  has  actually  boasted 
of  being  a  German.  As  the  modern  mind 
began  to  doubt  the  superiority  of  Calvinism 
to  Catholicism,  all  English  books,  papers,  and 
speeches  were  filled  more  and  more  with  a 
Teutonism  which  substituted  a  racial  for  a 
religious  superiority.  It  was  felt  to  be  a  more 
modern  and  even  a  more  progressive  prin- 
ciple of  distinction,  to  insist  on  ethnology 
rather  than  theology;  for  ethnology  was  sup- 
posed to  be  a  science.  Unionism  was  simply 
founded  on  Teutonism.  Hence  the  ordinary 
honest,  patriotic  Unionist  was  in  a  highly  hu- 
morous fix,  when  he  had  suddenly  to  begin 
denouncing  Teutonism  as  mere  terrorism. 
If  all  superiority  belonged  to  the  Teuton,  the 
supreme  superiority  must  clearly  belong  to 
the  most  Teutonic  Teuton.     If  I  claim  the 


08  Irish  Impressions 

right  to  kick  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  on  the  spe- 
cific ground  that  I  am  fatter  than  he  is,  it  is 
obvious  that  I  look  rather  a  fool  if  I  am  sud- 
denly kicked  by  somebody  who  is  fatter  still. 
When  the  earth  shakes  under  the  advancing 
form  of  one  coming  against  me  out  of  the  east 
who  is  fatter  than  I  (for  I  called  upon  the 
Irish  imagination  to  embrace  so  monstrous  a 
vision),  it  is  clear  that  whatever  my  relations 
to  the  rest  of  the  world,  in  my  relations  to 
Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  I  am  rather  at  a  disadvan- 
tage. Mr.  Shaw,  at  any  rate,  is  rather  in  a 
position  to  make  game  of  me;  of  which  it  is 
not  inconceivable  that  he  might  avail  himself. 
I  might  have  accumulated  a  vast  mass  of 
learned  sophistries  and  journalistic  catch- 
words, which  had  always  seemed  to  me  to 
justify  the  connection  between  waxing  fat  and 
kicking.  I  might  have  proved  from  history 
that  the  leaders  had  always  been  fat  men,  like 
William  the  Conqueror,  St.  Thomas  Aquinas, 
and  Charles  Fox.  I  might  have  proved  from 
physiology  that  fatness  is  a  proof  of  the  power 
of  organic  assimilation  and  digestion;  or  from 
comparative  zoology  that  the  elephant  is  the 


The  Englishman  in  Ireland  99 

wisest  of  the  beasts.  In  short,  I  might  be 
able  to  adduce  many  arguments  in  favour  of 
my  position.  Only,  unfortunately,  they  would 
now  all  become  arguments  against  my  posi- 
tion. Everything  I  had  ever  urged  against 
my  old  enemy  could  be  urged  much  more 
forcibly  against  me  by  my  new  enemy.  And 
my  position  touching  the  great  adipose  theory 
would  be  exactly  like  England's  position 
touching  the  equally  sensible  Teutonic  the- 
ory. If  Teutonism  was  creative  culture,  then 
on  our  own  showing  the  German  was  better 
than  the  Englishman.  If  Teutonism  was  bar- 
barism, then  on  our  own  showing  the  Eng- 
lishman was  more  barbaric  than  the  Irishman. 
The  real  answer,  of  course,  is  that  we  were 
not  Teutons  but  only  the  dupes  of  Teutonism; 
but  some  were  so  wholly  duped  that  they 
would  do  anything  rather  than  own  them- 
selves dupes.  These  unfortunates,  while  they 
are  already  ashamed  of  being  Teutons,  are 
still  proud  of  not  being  Celts. 

There  is  only  one  thing  that  could  save  my 
'dignity  in  such  an  undignified  fix  as  I  have 
fancied  here.     It  is  that  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw 


100  Irish  Impressions 

himself  should  come  to  my  rescue.  It  is  that 
Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  himself  should  declare  in 
favour  of  the  corpulent  conqueror  from  the 
east;  that  he  should  take  seriously  all  the  fads 
and  fallacies  of  that  fat-headed  superman. 
That,  and  that  alone,  would  ensure  all  my 
own  fads  and  fallacies  being  not  only  for- 
gotten but  forgiven.  There  is  present  to  my 
imagination,  I  regret  to  say,  a  wild  possibility 
that  this  is  what  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  might 
really  do.  Anyhow,  this  is  what  a  certain 
number  of  his  countrymen  really  did.  It  will 
be  apparent,  I  think,  from  these  pages  that  I 
do  not  believe  in  the  stage  Irishman.  I  am 
under  no  delusion  that  the  Irishman  is  soft- 
headed and  sentimental,  or  even  illogical  and 
inconsequent.  Nine  times  out  of  ten,  the 
Irishman  is  not  only  more  clear-headed,  but 
even  more  cool-headed  than  the  Englishman. 
But  I  think  it  is  true,  as  Mr.  Max  Beerbohm 
once  suggested  to  me  in  connection  with  Mr. 
Shaw  himself,  that  there  is  a  residual  per- 
versity in  the  Irishman,  which  comes  after 
and  not  before  the  analysis  of  a  question 
There  is  at  the  last  moment  a  cold  impatience 


The  Englishman  in  Ireland  101 

in  the  intellect,  an  irony  which  returns  on 
itself  and  rends  itself;  the  subtlety  of  a  sui- 
cide. However  this  may  be,  some  of  the  lean 
men,  instead  of  making  a  fool  of  the  fat  man, 
did  begin  almost  to  make  a  hero  of  the  fatter 
man;  to  admire  his  vast  curves  as  almost  cos- 
mic lines  of  development.  I  have  seen  Irish- 
American  pamphlets  which  took  quite  seri- 
ously (or,  I  prefer  to  think,  pretended  to  take 
quite  seriously)  the  ridiculous  romance  about 
the  Teutonic  tribes  having  revived  and 
refreshed  civilisation  after  the  fall  of  the 
Roman  Empire.  They  revived  civilisation 
very  much  as  they  restored  Louvain  or  recon- 
structed the  Lusitania.  It  was  a  rom.ance 
which  the  English  for  a  short  time  adopted 
as  a  convenience,  but  from  which  the  Irish 
have  continually  suffered  as  from  a  curse. 
It  \\2.s  a  suicidal  perversity  that  they  them- 
selves, in  their  turn,  should  perpetuate  their 
permanent  curse  as  a  temporary  convenience. 
That  was  the  worst  error  of  the  Irish,  or  of 
some  of  the  best  of  the  Irish.  That  is  why 
the  Easter  Rising  was  really  a  black  and  in- 
sane blunder.     It  was  not  because  it  involved 


102  Irish  Impressions 

the  Irish  in  a  military  defeat;  it  was  because 
it  lost  the  Irish  a  great  controversial  victory. 
The  rebel  deliberately  let  the  tyrant  out  of 
a  trap;  out  of  the  grinning  jaws  of  the  gigan- 
tic trap  of  a  joke. 

Many  of  the  most  extreme  Nationalists 
knew  this  well;  it  was  what  Kettle  probably 
meant  when  he  suggested  an  Anglo-Irish  his- 
tory called  "  The  Two  Fools  ";  and  of  course 
I  do  not  mean  that.  I  said  all  this  in  my 
very  casual  and  rambling  speech.  But  it  was 
based  on  this  idea,  that  men  had  missed  the 
joke  against  England,  and  that  now  unfortu- 
nately the  joke  was  rather  against  Ireland. 
It  was  Ireland  that  was  now  missing  a  great 
historical  opportunity  for  lack  of  humour  and 
imagination,  as  England  had  missed  it  a  mo- 
ment before.  If  the  Irish  would  laugh  at  the 
English  and  help  the  English,  they  would 
win  all  along  the  line.  In  the  real  history 
of  the  German  problem,  they  would  inherit 
all  the  advantages  of  having  been  right  from 
the  first.  It  was  now  not  so  much  a  question 
of  Ireland  consenting  to  follow  England's 
lead  as  of  England  being  obliged  to  follow 


The  Englishman  in  Ireland  103 

Ireland's  lead.  These  are  the  principles 
which  I  thought,  and  still  think,  the  only  pos- 
sible principles  to  form  the  basis  of  a  recruit- 
ing appeal  in  Ireland.  But  on  the  particular 
occasion  in  question  I  naturally  took  the  mat- 
ter much  more  lightly;  hoping  that  the  two 
jokes  might,  as  it  were,  cancel  out,  and  leave 
the  two  countries  quits  and  in  a  better  hu- 
mour. And  I  devoted  nearly  all  my  remarks 
to  testifying  that  the  English  had  really,  in 
the  mass,  shed  the  cruder  Teutonism  that  had 
excused  the  cruelties  of  the  past.  I  said  that 
Englishmen  were  anything  but  proud  of  the 
past  government  of  Ireland;  that  the  mass  of 
men  of  all  parties  were  far  more  modest  and 
humane  in  their  view  of  Ireland  than  most 
Irishmen  seem  to  suppose.  And  I  ended  with 
words  which  I  only  quote  here  from  memory, 
because  they  happen  to  be  the  text  of  the 
curious  incident  which  followed:  "This  is 
no  place  for  us  to  boast.  We  stand  here  in 
the  valley  of  our  humiliation,  where  the  flag 
we  love  has  done  very  little  that  was  not  evil; 
and  where  its  victories  have  been  far  more 
disastrous  than  defeats;"   and  I   concluded 


104  Irish  Impressions 

with  some  general  expression  of  the  hope 
(which  I  still  entertain)  that  two  lands  so 
much  loved,  by  those  who  know  them  best, 
are  not  meant  to  hate  each  other  for  ever. 

A  day  or  two  afterwards  a  distinguished 
historian  who  is  a  professor  at  Trinity  Col- 
lege, Mr.  Alison  Phillips,  wrote  an  indignant 
letter  to  the  Irish  Times.  He  announced  that 
he  was  not  in  the  valley  of  humiliation;  and 
warmly  contradicted  the  report  that  he  was, 
as  he  expressed  it,  "  sitting  in  sackcloth  and 
ashes."  He  remarked,  if  I  remember  right, 
that  I  was  middle-class,  which  is  profoundly 
true;  and  he  generally  resented  my  sugges- 
tions as  a  shameful  attack  upon  my  fellow 
Englishmen.  This  both  amused  and  puzzled 
me;  for  of  course  I  had  not  been  attacking 
Englishmen,  but  defending  them;  I  had  mere- 
ly been  assuring  the  Irish  that  the  English 
were  not  so  black,  or  so  red,  as  they  were 
painted  in  the  vision  of  "England's  cruel  red." 
I  had  not  said  there  what  I  have  said  here, 
about  the  anomaly  and  absurdity  of  England 
in  Ireland;  I  had  only  said  that  Ireland  had 
suffered  rather  from  the  Teutonic  theory  than 


The  Englishman  in  Ireland  105 

the  English  temper;  and  that  the  English  tem- 
per, experienced  at  close  quarters,  was  really 
quite  ready  for  a  reconciliation  with  Ireland. 
Nor  indeed  did  Mr.  Alison  Phillips  really 
complain  especially  of  my  denouncing  the 
English,  but  rather  of  my  way  of  defending 
them.  He  did  not  so  much  mind  being 
charged  with  the  vice  of  arrogance.  What 
he  could  not  bear  was  being  charged  with  the 
virtue  of  humility.  What  worried  him  was 
not  so  much  the  supposition  of  our  doing 
wrong,  as  that  anybody  should  conceive  it  pos- 
sible that  we  were  sorry  for  doing  wrong. 
After  all,  he  probably  reasoned,  it  may  not 
be  easy  for  an  eminent  historical  scholar  actu- 
ally to  deny  that  certain  tortures  have  taken 
place,  or  certain  perjuries  been  proved;  but 
there  is  really  no  reason  why  he  should  ad- 
mit that  the  memory  of  using  torture  or  per- 
jury has  so  morbid  an  effect  on  the  mind. 
Therefore  he  naturally  desired  to  correct  any 
impression  that  might  arise,  to  the  effect  that 
he  had  been  seen  in  the  valley  of  humiliation, 
like  a  man  called  Christian. 

But  there  was  one  fancy  that  lingered  in  the 


106  Irish  Impressions 

mind  over  and  above  the  fun  of  the  thing;  and 
threw  a  sort  of  random  ray  of  conjecture  upon 
all  that  long  international  misunderstanding 
which  it  is  so  hard  to  understand.  Was  it 
possible,  I  thought,  that  this  had  happened 
before,  and  that  I  was  caught  in  the  treadmill 
of  recurrence?  It  may  be  that  whenever, 
throughout  the  centuries,  a  roughly  represent- 
ative and  fairly  good-humoured  Englishman 
has  spoken  to  the  Irish  as  thousands  of  such 
Englishmen  feel  about  them,  some  other 
Englishman  on  the  spot  has  hastened  to  ex- 
plain that  the  English  are  not  going  in  for 
sackcloth  and  ashes,  but  only  for  phylacteries 
and  the  blowing  of  their  own  trumpets  before 
them.  Perhaps  whenever  one  Englishman 
said  that  the  English  were  not  so  black  as  they 
were  painted  in  the  past,  another  Englishman 
always  rushed  forward  to  prove  that  the  Eng- 
lish were  not  so  white  as  they  were  painted, 
on  the  present  occasion.  And  after  all  it  was 
only  Englishman  against  Englishman,  one 
word  against  another;  and  there  were  many 
guperiorities  on  the  side  which  refused  to  be- 
lieve in  English  sympathy  or  self-criticism. 


Tlie  Englishman  in  Ireland  107 

And  very  few  of  the  Irish,  I  fear,  understood 
the  simple  fact  of  the  matter,  or  the  real  spir- 
itual excuses  of  the  party  thus  praising  spirit- 
ual pride.  Few  understood  that  I  repre- 
sented large  numbers  of  amiable  Englishmen 
in  England,  while  Mr.  Phillips  necessarily 
represented  a  small  number  of  naturally  irri- 
table Englishmen  in  Ireland.  Few,  I  fancy, 
sympathised  with  him  so  much  as  I  do;  for 
I  know  very  well  that  he  was  not  merely 
feeling  as  an  Englishman,  but  as  an  exile. 


VI — Tlie  Mistake  of  Englmid 

I  MET  one  hearty  Unionist,  not  to  say 
Coerclonlst  in  Ireland,  in  such  a  man- 
ner as  to  talk  to  him  at  some  length; 
one  quite  genial  and  genuine  Irish  gen- 
tleman, who  was  solidly  on  the  side  of  the 
system  of  British  government  in  Ireland. 
This  gentleman  had  been  shot  through  the 
body  by  the  British  troops  in  their  efforts 
to  suppress  the  Easter  Rebellion.  The  mat- 
ter just  missed  being  tragic;  but  since  it  did, 
I  cannot  help  feeling  it  as  slightly  comic. 
He  assured  me  with  great  earnestness  that  the 
rebels  had  been  guilty  of  the  most  calculated 
cruelties;  and  that  they  must  have  done  their 
bloody  deeds  In  the  coldest  blood.  But  since 
he  is  himself  a  solid  and  (I  am  happy  to  say) 
a  living  demonstration  that  the  firing  even  on 
his  own  side  must  have  been  rather  wild,  I 

am  inclined  to  give  the  benefit  of  the  doubt 

loa 


The  Mistake  of  England  109 

also  to  the  less  elaborately  educated  marks- 
men. When  disciplined  troops  destroy  peo- 
ple so  much  at  random,  it  would  seem  un- 
reasonable to  deny  that  rioters  may  possibly 
have  been  riotous.  I  hardly  think  he  was, 
or  even  professed  to  be,  a  person  of  judicial 
impartiality;  and  it  is  entirely  to  his  honour 
that  he  was,  on  principle,  so  much  more  indig- 
nant with  the  rioters  who  did  not  shoot  him 
than  with  the  other  rioters  who  did.  But  I 
venture  to  introduce  him  here  not  so  much 
as  an  individual  as  an  allegory.  The  incident 
seems  to  me  to  set  forth,  in  a  pointed,  lucid, 
and  picturesque  form,  exactly  what  the  Brit- 
ish military  government  really  succeeded  in 
doing  in  Ireland.  It  succeeded  in  half-killing 
its  friends,  and  affording  an  intelligent  but 
somewhat  inhumane  amusement  to  all  its  en- 
emies. The  fire-eater  held  his  fire-arm  in  so 
contorted  a  posture  as  to  give  the  wondering 
spectator  a  simple  impression  of  suicide. 

Let  it  be  understood  that  I  speak  here,  not 
of  tyranny  thwarting  Irish  desires,  but  solely 
of  our  own  stupidity  in  thwarting  our  own 
desires.     I  shall  discuss  elsewhere  the  alleged 


110  Irish  Impressions 

presence  or  absence  of  practical  oppression  ici 
Ireland;  here  I  am  only  continuing  from  the 
last  chapter  my  experiences  of  the  recruiting 
campaign.  I  am  concerned  now,  as  I  was 
concerned  then,  with  the  simple  business  mat- 
ter of  getting  a  big  levy  of  soldiers  from  Ire- 
land. I  think  it  was  Sir  Francis  Vane,  one 
of  the  few  really  valuable  public  servants  in 
the  matter  (I  need  not  say  he  was  dismissed 
for  having  been  proved  right),  who  said  that 
the  mere  sight  of  some  representative  Belgian 
priests  and  nuns  might  have  produced  some- 
thing like  a  crusade.  The  matter  seems  to 
have  been  mostly  left  to  elderly  English  land- 
lords; and  it  would  be  cruel  to  record  their 
adventures.  It  will  be  enough  that  I  found, 
for  a  positive  fact,  that  these  unhappy  gentle- 
men had  displayed  throughout  Ireland  a  pos- 
ter consisting  only  of  the  Union  Jack  and  the 
appeal,  "  Is  not  this  your  flag?  Come  and 
fight  for  it  I  "  It  faintly  recalls  something  we 
all  learnt  in  the  Latin  grammar  about  ques- 
tions that  expect  the  answer  no.  These  re- 
markable recruiting-sergeants  did  not  realise, 
I  suppose,  what  an  extraordinary  thing  this 


The  Mistake  of  England  111 

was,  not  merely  in  Irish  opinion,  but  gener- 
ally in  international  opinion.  Over  a  great 
part  of  the  globe,  it  would  sound  like  a  story 
that  the  Turks  had  placarded  Armenia  with 
the  Crescent  of  Islam,  and  asked  all  the  Chris- 
tians who  were  not  yet  massacred  whether 
they  did  not  love  the  flag.  I  really  do  not 
believe  that  the  Turks  would  be  so  stupid  as 
to  do  it.  Of  course  it  may  be  said  that  such 
an  impression  or  association  is  mere  slander 
and  sedition,  that  there  is  no  reason  to  be  ten- 
der to  such  treasonable  emotions  at  all,  that 
men  ought  to  do  their  duty  to  that  flag  what- 
ever is  put  upon  that  poster;  in  short,  that  it 
is  the  duty  of  an  Irishman  to  be  a  patriotic 
Englishman,  or  whatever  it  is  that  he  is  ex- 
pected to  be.  But  this  view,  however  logical 
and  clear,  can  only  be  used  logically  and 
clearly  as  an  argument  for  conscription.  It 
is  simply  muddle-headed  to  apply  it  to  any 
appeal  for  volunteers  an5rwhere,  in  Ireland  or 
England.  The  whole  object  of  a  recruiting 
poster,  or  any  poster,  is  to  be  attractive;  it  is 
picked  out  in  words  or  colours  to  be  pictur- 
esquely and  pointedly  attractive.     If  it  low- 


112  Irish  Impressions 

ers  you  to  make  an  attractive  offer,  do  not 
make  it;  but  do  not  deliberately  make  it,  and 
deliberately  make  it  repulsive.  If  a  certain 
medicine  is  so  mortally  necessary  and  so  mor- 
tally nasty,  that  it  must  be  forced  on  every- 
body by  the  policeman,  call  the  policeman. 
But  do  not  call  an  advertisement  agent  to  push 
it  like  a  patent  medicine,  solely  by  means  of 
"  publicity  "  and  "  suggestion,"  and  then  con- 
fine him  strictly  to  telling  the  public  how 
nasty  it  is. 

But  the  British  blunder  in  Ireland  was  a 
much  deeper  and  more  destructive  thing.  It 
can  be  summed  up  in  one  sentence;  that 
whether  or  no  we  were  as  black  as  we  were 
painted,  we  actually  painted  ourselves  much 
blacker  than  we  were.  Bad  as  we  were,  we 
managed  to  look  much  worse  than  we  were. 
In  a  horrible  unconsciousness  we  re-enacted 
history  through  sheer  ignorance  of  history. 
We  were  foolish  enough  to  dress  up,  and  to 
play  up,  to  the  part  of  a  villain  in  a  very  old 
tragedy.  We  clothed  ourselves  almost  care- 
lessly in  fire  and  sword;  and  if  the  fire  had 
been  literally  stage-fire  or  the  sword  a  wooden 


The  Mistake  of  England  113 

sword,  the  merely  artistic  blunder  would  have 
been  quite  as  bad.  For  instance,  I  soon  came 
on  the  traces  of  a  quarrel  about  some  silly 
veto  in  the  schools,  against  Irish  children 
wearing  green  rosettes.  Anybody  with  a 
streak  of  historical  imagination  would  have 
avoided  a  quarrel  in  that  particular  case  about 
that  particular  colour.  It  is  touching  the 
talisman,  it  is  naming  the  name,  it  is  striking 
the  note  of  another  relation  in  which  we  were 
in  the  wrong,  to  the  confusion  of  a  new  rela- 
tion in  which  we  were  in  the  right.  Any- 
body of  common  sense,  considering  any  other 
case,  can  see  the  almost  magic  force  of  these 
m.aterial  coincidences.  If  the  English  arm- 
ies in  France  in  19 14  considered  themselves 
justified  for  some  reason  in  executing  some 
Frenchwoman,  they  would  perhaps  be  indis- 
creet if  they  killed  her  (however  logically) 
tied  to  a  stake  in  the  market-place  of  Rouen. 
If  the  people  of  Paris  rose  in  the  most  right- 
eous revolt  against  the  most  corrupt  conspir- 
acy of  some  group  of  the  wealthy  French 
Protestants,  I  should  strongly  advise  them  not 
to  fix  the  date  for  the  vigil  of  St.  Bartholo- 


114  Irish  Impressions 

mew,  or  to  go  to  work  with  white  scarfs  tied 
round  their  arms.  Many  of  us  hope  to  see 
a  Jewish  commonwealth  reconstituted  in  Pal- 
estine; and  we  could  easily  imagine  some 
quarrel  in  which  the  government  of  Jerusalem 
was  impelled  to  punish  some  Greek  or  Latin 
pilgrim  or  monk.  The  Jews  might  even  be 
right  in  the  quarrel  and  the  Christian  wrong. 
But  it  may  be  hinted  that  the  Jews  would  be 
ill-advised  if  they  actually  crowned  him  with 
thorns,  and  killed  him  on  a  hill  just  outside 
Jerusalem.  Now  we  must  know  by  this  time, 
or  the  sooner  we  know  it  the  better,  that  the 
whole  mind  of  that  European  society  which 
we  have  helped  to  save,  and  in  which  we  have 
henceforth  a  part  right  of  control,  regards 
the  Anglo-Irish  story  as  one  of  these  black 
and  white  stories  in  a  history  book.  It  sees 
the  tragedy  of  Ireland  as  simply  and  clearly 
as  the  tragedy  of  Christ  or  Joan  of  Arc. 
There  may  have  been  more  to  be  said  on  the 
coercive  side  than  the  culture  of  the  Continent 
understands.  So  there  was  a  great  deal  more 
than  is  usually  admitted,  to  be  said  on  the  side 
of  the  patriotic  democracy  which  condemned 


The  Mistake  of  England  115 

Socrates;  and  a  very  great  deal  to  be  said  on 
the  side  of  the  imperial  aristocracy  which 
would  have  crushed  Washington.  But  these 
disputes  will  not  take  Socrates  from  his  niche 
among  the  pagan  saints,  or  Washington  from 
his  pedestal  among  the  republican  heroes. 
After  a  certain  testing  time,  substantial  justice 
is  always  done  to  the  men  who  stood  in  some 
unmistakable  manner  for  liberty  and  light, 
against  contemporary  caprice  and  fashionable 
force  and  brutality.  In  this  intellectual  sense, 
in  the  only  competent  intellectual  courts,  there 
is  already  justice  to  Ireland.  In  the  wide 
daylight  of  this  world-wide  fact,  we  or  our 
representatives  must  get  into  a  quarrel  with 
children,  of  all  people,  and  about  the  colour 
green,  of  all  things  in  the  world.  It  is  an 
exact  working  model  of  the  mistake  I  mean. 
It  is  the  more  brutal  because  it  is  not  strictly 
cruel;  and  yet  instantly  revives  the  memories 
of  cruelty.  There  need  be  nothing  wrong 
with  it  in  the  abstract,  or  in  a  less  tragic 
atmosphere  where  the  symbols  were  not  tal- 
ismans. A  schoolmaster  in  the  prosperous 
and  enlightened  town  of  Eatanswill  might  not 


116  Irish  Impressions 

unpardonably  protest  against  the  school- 
children parading  in  class  the  Bufif  and  Blue 
favours  of  Mr.  Simpkin  and  Mr.  Slumkey. 
But  who  but  a  madman  would  not  see  that  to 
say  that  word,  or  make  that  sign,  in  Ireland, 
was  like  giving  a  signal  for  keening,  and  the 
lament  over  lost  justice  that  is  lifted  in  the 
burden  of  the  noblest  of  national  songs;  that 
to  point  to  that  rag  of  that  colour  was  to  bring 
back  all  the  responsibilities  and  realities  of 
that  reign  of  terror  when  we  were,  quite  lit- 
erally, hanging  men  and  women  too  for  wear- 
ing of  the  green?  We  were  not  literally 
hanging  these  children.  As  a  matter  of  mere 
utility,  we  should  have  been  more  sensible  if 
we  had  been. 

But  the  same  fact  took  an  even  more  fan- 
tastic form.  We  not  only  dressed  up  as  our 
ancestors,  but  we  actually  dressed  up  as  our 
enemies.  I  need  hardly  state  my  own  convic- 
tion that  the  Pacifist  trick  of  lumping  the 
abuses  of  one  side  along  with  the  abomina- 
tions of  the  other,  was  a  shallow  pedantry 
come  of  sheer  ignorance  of  the  history  of 
Europe   and   the   barbarians.     It  was   quite 


The  Mistake  of  England  117 

false  that  the  English  evil  was  exactly  the 
same  as  the  German.  It  was  quite  false;  but 
the  English  in  Ireland  laboured  long  and  de- 
votedly to  prove  it  was  quite  true.  They 
were  not  content  with  borrowing  old  uniforms 
from  the  Hessians  of  1798,  they  borrowed  the 
newest  and  neatest  uniforms  from  the  Prus- 
sians of  1914.  I  will  give  only  one  story  that 
I  was  told,  out  of  many,  to  show  what  I  mean. 
There  was  a  sort  of  village  musical  festival 
at  a  place  called  Cullen  in  County  Cork,  at 
which  there  were  naturally  national  songs  and 
very  possibly  national  speeches.  That  there 
was  a  sort  of  social  atmosphere,  which  its 
critics  would  call  Sinn  Fein,  is  exceedingly 
likely;  for  that  now  exists  all  over  Ireland, 
and  especially  that  part  of  Ireland.  If  we 
wish  to  prevent  it  being  expressed  at  all,  we 
must  not  only  forbid  all  public  meetings,  but 
all  private  meetings,  and  even  the  meeting  of 
husband  and  wife  in  their  own  house.  Still 
there  might  have  been  a  case,  on  coercionist 
lines,  for  forbidding  this  public  meeting. 
There  might  be  a  case,  on  coercionist  lines, 
for  imprisoning  all  the  people  who  attended 


118  Irish  Impressions 

it;  or  a  still  clearer  case,  on  those  lines,  for 
imprisoning  all  the  people  in  Ireland.  But 
the  coercionist  authorities  did  not  merely  for- 
bid the  meeting;  which  would  mean  some- 
thing. They  did  not  arrest  the  people  at  the 
meeting;  which  would  mean  something.  They 
did  not  blow  the  whole  meeting  to  hell  with 
big  guns ;  which  would  also  mean  something. 
What  they  did  was  this.  They  caused  a  mil- 
itary aeroplane  to  jerk  itself  backwards  and 
forwards  in  a  staggering  fashion  just  over  the 
heads  of  the  people,  making  as  much  noise 
as  possible  to  drown  the  music,  and  dropping 
flare  rockets  and  fire  in  various  somewhat  dan- 
gerous forms  in  the  neighbourhood  of  any 
men,  women,  and  children  who  happened  to 
be  listening  to  the  music.  The  reader  will 
note  with  what  exquisite  art,  and  fine  fastid- 
ious selection,  the  strategist  has  here  contrived 
to  look  as  Prussian  as  possible  without  secur- 
ing any  of  the  advantages  of  Prussianism. 
There  was  a  certain  amount  of  real  danger 
to  the  children;  but  not  very  much.  There 
was  about  as  much  as  there  generally  has  been 
when  boys  have  been  flogged  for  playing  the 


The  Mistake  of  England  119 

fool  with  fireworks.  But  by  laboriously 
climbing  hundreds  of  feet  into  the  air,  in  an 
enormous  military  machine,  these  ingenious 
people  managed  to  make  themselves  a  meteor 
in  heaven  and  a  spectacle  to  all  the  earth ;  the 
English  raining  fire  on  women  and  children 
just  as  the  Germans  did.  I  repeat  that  they 
did  not  actually  destroy  children,  though  they 
did  endanger  them;  for  playing  with  fire- 
works is  always  playing  with  fire.  And  I 
repeat  that,  as  a  mere  matter  of  business,  it 
would  have  been  more  sensible  if  they  had 
destroyed  children.  That  would  at  least  have 
had  the  human  meaning  that  has  run  through 
a  hundred  massacres:  "wolf-cubs  who  would 
grow  into  wolves."  It  might  at  least  have 
the  execrable  excuse  of  decreasing  the  num- 
ber of  rebels.  What  they  did  would  quite 
certainly  increase  it. 

An  artless  Member  of  Parliament,  whose 
name  I  forget,  attempted  an  apology  for  this 
half-witted  performance.  He  interposed  in 
the  Unionist  interests,  when  the  Nationalists 
were  asking  questions  about  the  matter;  and 
said  with  much  heat,  "  May  I  ask  whether 


120  I?ish  Impressions 

honest  and  loyal  subjects  have  anything  to  fear 
from  British  aeroplanes?  "  I  have  often  won- 
dered what  he  meant.  It  seems  possible  that 
he  was  in  the  mood  of  that  mediaeval  fanatic 
who  cried,  "  God  will  know  his  own  " ;  and 
that  he  himself  would  fling  any  sort  of  flam- 
ing bolts  about  an5^where,  believing  that  they 
would  always  be  miraculously  directed  to- 
wards the  heads  harbouring,  at  that  moment, 
the  most  incorrect  political  opinions.  Or  per- 
haps he  meant  that  loyal  subjects  are  so  su- 
perbly loyal  that  they  do  not  mind  being  acci- 
dentally burnt  alive,  so  long  as  they  are  as- 
sured that  the  fire  was  dropped  on  them  by 
government  officials  out  of  a  government  ap- 
paratus. But  my  purpose  here  is  not  to 
fathom  such  a  mystery,  but  merely  to  fix  the 
dominant  fact  of  the  whole  situation;  that  the 
government  copied  the  theatricality  of  Pots- 
dam even  more  than  the  tyranny  of  Potsdam. 
In  that  incident,  the  English  laboriously  re- 
produced all  the  artificial  accessories  of  the 
most  notorious  crimes  of  Germany;  the  flying 
men,  the  flame,  the  selection  of  a  mixed 
crowd,  the  selection  of   a   popular  festival. 


The  Mistake  of  England  121 

They  had  every  part  of  it,  except  the  point 
of  it.  It  was  as  if  the  whole  British  army  in 
Ireland  had  dressed  up  in  spiked  helmets  and 
spectacles,  merely  that  they  might  look  like 
Prussians.  It  was  even  more  as  if  a  man  had 
walked  across  Ireland  on  three  gigantic  stilts, 
taller  than  the  trees  and  visible  from  the  most 
distant  village,  solely  that  he  might  look  like 
one  of  those  unhuman  monsters  from  Mars, 
striding  about  on  their  iron  tripods  in  the 
great  nightmare  of  Mr.  Wells.  Such  was 
our  educational  efficiency,  that,  before  the 
end,  multitudes  of  simple  Irish  people  really 
had  about  the  English  invasion  the  same  par- 
ticular psychological  reaction  that  multitudes 
of  simple  English  people  had  about  the  Ger- 
man invasion.  I  mean  that  it  seemed  to  come 
not  only  from  outside  the  nation,  but  from 
outside  the  world.  It  was  unearthly  in  the 
strict  sense  in  which  a  comet  is  unearthly. 
It  was  the  more  appallingly  alien  for  coming 
close;  it  was  the  more  outlandish  the  farther 
it  went  inland.  These  Christian  peasants 
have  seen  coming  westward  out  of  England 
what  we  saw  coming  westward  out  of  Ger- 


122  Irish  Impressions 

many.     They   saw   science    in   arms;   which 
turns  the  very  heavens  into  hells. 

I  have  purposely  put  these  fragmentary  and 
secondary  impressions  before  any  general  sur- 
vey of  Anglo-Irish  policy  in  the  war.  I  do 
so,  first,  because  I  think  a  record  of  the  real 
things,  that  seemed  to  bulk  biggest  to  any  real 
observer  at  any  real  moment,  is  often  more 
useful  than  the  setting  forth  of  theories  he 
may  have  made  up  before  he  saw  any  reali- 
ties at  all.  But  I  do  it  in  the  second  place 
because  the  more  general  summaries  of  our 
statesmanship,  or  lack  of  statesmanship,  are 
so  much  more  likely  to  be  found  elsewhere. 
But  if  we  wish  to  comprehend  the  queer 
cross-purposes,  it  will  be  well  to  keep  always 
in  mind  a  historical  fact  I  have  mentioned  al- 
ready; the  reality  of  the  old  Franco-Irish 
Entente.  It  lingers  alive  in  Ireland ;  and  espe- 
cially the  most  Irish  parts  of  Ireland.  In  the 
fiercely  Fenian  city  of  Cork,  walking  round 
the  Young  Ireland  monument  that  seems  to 
give  revolt  the  majesty  of  an  institution,  a  man 
told  me  that  German  bands  had  been  hooted 
and  pelted  in  those  streets  out  of  an  indignant 


Tlie  Mistake  of  England  123 

memory  of  1870.  And  an  eminent  scholar  in 
the  same  town,  referring  to  the  events  of  the 
same  "  terrible  year,"  said  to  me:  "  In  1870 
Ireland  sympathised  with  France  and  Eng- 
land with  Germany;  and  as  usual,  Ireland 
was  right!  "  But  if  they  were  right  when  we 
were  wrong,  they  only  began  to  be  wrong 
when  we  were  right.  A  sort  of  play  or  par- 
able might  be  written  to  show  that  this  appar- 
ent paradox  is  a  very  genuine  piece  of  human 
psychology.  Suppose  there  are  two  partners 
named  John  and  James;  that  James  has  al- 
ways been  urging  the  establishment  of  a 
branch  of  the  business  in  Paris.  Long  ago 
John  quarrelled  with  this  furiously  as  a  for- 
eign fad ;  but  he  has  since  forgotten  all  about 
it;  for  the  letters  from  James  bored  him  so 
much  that  he  has  not  opened  any  of  them  for 
years.  One  fine  day  John,  finding  himself  in 
Paris,  conceives  the  original  idea  of  a  Paris 
branch;  but  he  is  conscious  in  a  confused  way 
of  having  quarrelled  with  his  partner,  and 
vaguely  feels  that  his  partner  would  be  an 
obstacle  to  anything.  John  remembers  that 
James  was  always  cantankerous,  and  forgets 


124  Irish  Impressioris 

that  he  was  cantankerous  in  favour  of  this 
project,  and  not  against  it.  John  therefore 
sends  James  a  telegram,  of  a  brevity  amount- 
ing to  brutality,  simply  telling  him  to  come 
in  with  no  nonsense  about  it;  and  when  he 
has  no  instant  reply,  sends  a  solicitor's  letter 
to  be  followed  by  a  writ.  How  James  will 
take  it  depends  very  much  on  James.  How 
he  will  hail  this  happy  confirmation  of  his 
own  early  opinions  will  depend  on  whether 
James  is  an  unusually  patient  and  charitable 
person.  And  James  is  not.  He  is  unfortu- 
nately the  very  man,  of  all  men  in  the  world, 
to  drop  his  own  original  agreement  and  every- 
thing else  into  the  black  abyss  of  disdain, 
which  now  divides  him  from  the  man  who 
has  the  impudence  to  agree  with  him.  He  is 
the  very  man  to  say  he  will  have  nothing  to 
do  with  his  own  original  notion,  because  it  is 
now  the  belated  notion  of  a  fool.  Such  a 
character  could  easily  be  analysed  in  any  good 
novel;  such  conduct  would  readily  be  be- 
lieved in  any  good  play.  It  could  not  be  be- 
lieved when  it  happened  in  real  life.  And 
it  did  happen  in  real  life;  the  Paris  project 


The  Mistake  of  England  125 


was  the  sense  of  the  safety  of  Paris  as  the 
pivot  of  human  history;  the  abrupt  telegram 
was  the  recruiting  campaign,  and  the  writ  was 
conscription. 

As  to  what  Irish  conscription  was,  or  rather 
would  have  been,   I   cannot  understand  any 
visitor  in  Ireland  having  the  faintest  doubt, 
unless   (as  is  often  the  case)   his  tour  was  so 
carefully  planned  as  to  permit  him  to  visit 
everything  in  Ireland  except  the  Irish.    Irish 
conscription  was  a  piece  of  rank  raving  mad- 
ness  which    was    fortunately    stopped,    with 
other  bad  things,  by  the  blow  of  Foch  at  the 
second  battle  of  the  Marne.     It  could  not  pos- 
sibly produce  at  the  last  moment  allies  on 
whom  we  could  depend;  and  it  would  have 
lost  us  the  whole  sympathy  of  the  allies  on 
whom  we  at  that  moment  depended.     I  do 
not  mean  that  American  soldiers  would  have 
mutinied;  though  Irish  soldiers  might  have 
done  so;  I  mean  something  much  worse.     I 
mean  that  the  whole  mood  of  America  would 
have  altered,  and  there  would  have  been  some 
kind  of  compromise  with  German  tyranny, 
in  sheer  disgust  at  a  long  exhibition  of  Eng- 


126  Irish  Impressions 


lish  tyranny.  Things  would  have  happened 
in  Ireland,  week  after  week,  and  month  after 
month,  such  as  the  modern  imagination  has 
not  seen  except  where  Prussia  has  established 
hell.  We  should  have  butchered  women  and 
children;  they  would  have  made  us  butcher 
them.  We  should  have  killed  priests,  and 
probably  the  best  priests.  It  could  not  be 
better  stated  than  in  the  words  of  an  Irish- 
man, as  he  stood  with  me  in  a  high  terraced 
garden  outside  Dublin,  looking  towards  that 
unhappy  city,  who  shook  his  head  and  said 
sadly,  "  They  will  shoot  the  wTong  bishop." 
Of  the  meaning  of  this  huge  furnace  of 
defiance  I  shall  write  w^hen  I  write  of  the 
national  idea  itself.  I  am  concerned  here  not 
for  their  nation  but  for  mine ;  and  especially 
^vith  its  peril  from  Prussia  and  its  help  from 
America.  And  it  is  simply  a  question  of  con- 
sidering what  these  real  things  are  really  like. 
Remember  that  the  American  Republic  is 
practically  founded  on  the  fact,  or  fancy,  that 
England  is  a  tyrant.  Remember  that  it  was 
being  ceaselessly  swept  with  new  waves  of 
immigrant  Irishry  telling  tales  (too  many  of 


Tlie  Mistake  of  England  127 

them  true,  though  not  all,)  of  the  particular 
cases  in  which  England  had  been  a  tyrant. 
It  would  be  hard  to  find  a  parallel  to  explain 
to  Englishmen  the  effect  of  awakening  tradi- 
tions so  truly  American  by  a  prolonged  dis- 
play of  England  as  the  tyrant  in  Ireland.  A 
faint  approximation  might  be  found  if  we 
imagined  the  survivors  of  Victorian  England, 
steeped  in  the  tradition  of  Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin,  watching  the  American  troops  march 
through  London.  Suppose  they  noted  that 
the  negro  troops  alone  had  to  march  in  chains, 
with  a  white  man  in  a  broad-brimmed  hat 
walking  beside  them  and  flourishing  a  whip. 
Scenes  far  worse  than  that  would  have  fol- 
lowed Irish  conscription;  but  the  only  pur- 
pose of  this  chapter  is  to  show  that  scenes 
quite  as  stupid  marked  every  stage  of  Irish 
recruitment.  For  it  certainly  would  not  have 
reassured  the  traditional  sympathisers  with 
Uncle  Tom  to  be  told  that  the  chains  were 
only  a  part  of  the  uniform,  or  that  the  niggers 
moved  not  at  the  touch  of  the  whip,  but  only 
at  the  crack  of  it. 

Such  was  our  practical  policy;  and  the  sin- 


128  Irish  Impressions 

gle  and  sufficient  comment  on  it  can  be  found 
in  a  horrible  whisper  which  can  scarcely  now 
be  stilled.  It  is  said,  with  a  dreadful  plausi- 
bility, that  the  Unionists  were  deliberately 
trying  to  prevent  a  large  Irish  recruitment, 
which  would  certainly  have  meant  reconcil- 
iation and  reform.  In  plain  words,  it  is  said 
that  they  were  willing  to  be  traitors  to  Eng- 
land, if  they  could  only  still  be  tyrants  to  Ire- 
land. Only  too  many  facts  can  be  made  to 
fit  in  with  this;  but  for  me  it  is  still  too  hid- 
eous to  be  easily  believed.  But  whatever  our 
motives  in  doing  it,  there  is  simply  no  doubt 
whatever  about  what  we  did,  in  this  matter 
of  the  Pro-Germans  in  Ireland.  We  did  not 
crush  the  Pro-Germans;  we  did  not  convert 
them  or  coerce  them;  or  educate  them  or  ex- 
terminate them  or  massacre  them.  We  man- 
ufactured them;  we  turned  them  out  pa- 
tiently, steadily,  and  systematically  as  if  from 
a  factory;  we  made  them  exactly  as  we  made 
munitions.  It  needed  no  little  social  science 
to  produce  in  any  kind  of  Irishman,  any  kind 
of  sympathy  with  Prussia;  but  we  were  equal 
to  the  task.    What  concerns  me  here,  how- 


The  Mistake  of  England  129 


ever,  is  that  we  were  busy  at  the  same  work 
among  the  Irish-Americans,  and  ultimately 
among  all  the  Americans.  And  that  would 
have  meant,  as  I  have  already  noted,  the  thing 
that  I  always  feared ;  the  dilution  of  the  pol- 
icy of  the  Allies.  Anything  that  looked  like 
a  prolonged  Prussianism  in  Ireland  would 
have  meant  a  compromise;  that  is,  a  perpet- 
uated Prussianism  in  Europe.  I  know  that 
some  who  agree  with  me  in  other  matters' 
disagree  with  me  in  this;  but  I  should  indeed 
be  ashamed  if,  having  to  say  so  often  where 
I  think  my  country  was  wrong,  I  did  not  say 
as  plainly  where  I  think  she  was  right.  The 
notion  of  a  compromise  was  founded  on  the 
coincidence  of  recent  national  wars  which 
were  only  about  the  terms  of  peace,  not  about 
the  type  of  civilisation.  But  there  do  recur, 
at  longer  historic  intervals,  universal  wars  of 
religion,  not  concerned  with  what  one  nation 
shall  do,  but  with  what  all  nations  shall  be. 
They  recommence  until  they  are  finished,  in 
things  like  the  fall  of  Carthage  or  the  rout 
of  Attlla.  It  is  quite  true  that  history  is  for 
the  most  part  a  plain  road,  which  the  tribes 


130  Irish  Impressions 

of  men  must  travel  side  by  side,  bargaining 
at  the  same  markets  or  worshipping  at  the 
same  shrines,  fighting  and  making  friends 
again;  and  wisely  making  friends  quickly. 
But  we  need  only  see  the  road  stretch  but  a 
little  farther,  from  a  hill  but  a  little  higher, 
to  see  that  sooner  or  later  it  comes  always 
to  another  place,  where  stands  a  winged  im- 
age of  Victory;  and  the  ways  divide. 


VII — Tlie  Mistake  of  Ireland 


THERE  is  one  phrase  which  certain 
Irishmen  sometimes  use  in  conversa-- 
tion,  which  indicates  the  real  mistake 
that  they  sometimes  make  in  contro- 
versy. When  the  more  bitter  sort  of  Irish- 
man is  at  last  convinced  of  the  existence  of 
the  less  bitter  sort  of  Englishman,  who  does 
realise  that  he  ought  not  to  rule  a  Christian 
people  by  alternations  of  broken  heads  and 
broken  promises,  the  Irishman  has  sometimes 
a  way  of  saying,  "  I  am  sure  you  must  have 
Irish  blood  in  your  veins."  Several  people 
told  me  so  when  I  denounced  Irish  conscrip- 
tion, a  thing  ruinous  to  the  whole  cause  of  the 
Alliance.  Some  told  me  so  even  when  I  re- 
called the  vile  story  of  '98;  a  thing  damned 
by  the  whole  opinion  of  the  world.  I  assured 
them  in  va'in  that  I  did  not  need  to  have  Irish 
blood  in  my  veins  in  order  to  object  to  having 

131 


132  Irish  Impressions 

Irish  blood  on  my  hands.  So  far  as  I  know, 
I  have  not  one  single  drop  of  Irish  blood  in 
my  veins.  I  have  some  Scottish  blood;  and 
some  which,  judging  merely  by  a  name  in  the 
family,  must  once  have  been  French  blood. 
But  the  determining  part  of  it  is  purely  Eng- 
lish, and  I  believe  East  Anglian,  at  the  flat- 
test and  farthest  extreme  from  the  Celtic 
fringe.  But  I  am  here  concerned,  not  with 
whether  it  is  true,  but  with  why  they  should 
want  to  prove  it  is  true.  One  would  think 
they  would  want  to  prove  precisely  the  oppo- 
site. Even  if  they  were  exaggerative  and  un- 
scrupulous, they  should  surely  seek  to  show 
that  an  Englishman  was  forced  to  condemn 
England,  rather  than  that  an  Irishman  was 
inclined  to  support  Ireland.  As  it  is,  they 
are  labouring  to  destroy  the  impartiality  and 
even  the  independence  of  their  own  witness. 
It  does  not  support,  but  rather  surrenders 
Irish  rights,  to  say  that  only  the  Irish  can 
see  that  there  are  Irish  wrongs.  It  is  con- 
fessing that  Ireland  is  a  Celtic  dream  and 
delusion,  a  cloud  of  sunset  mistaken  for  an 
island.     It  is  admitting  that  such  a  nation  is 


The  Mistake  of  Ireland  133 

only  a  notion,  and  a  nonsensical  notion;  but 
in  reality  it  is  this  notion  about  Irish  blood 
that  is  nonsensical.  Ireland  is  not  an  illu- 
sion; and  her  wrongs  are  not  the  subjective 
fancies  of.  the  Irish.  Irishmen  did  not  dream 
that  they  were  evicted  out  of  house  and  home 
by  the  ruthless  application  of  a  land  law  no 
man  now  dares  to  defend.  It  was  not  a  night- 
mare that  dragged  them  from  their  beds;  nor 
were  they  sleepwalkers  when  they  wandered 
as  far  as  America.  Skeffington  did  not  have 
a  delusion  that  he  was  being  shot  for  keeping 
the  peace;  the  shooting  v/as  objective,  as  the 
Prussian  professors  would  say;  as  objective  as 
the  Prussian  militarists  could  desire.  The 
delusions  were  admittedly  peculiar  to  the 
British  official  whom  the  British  Government 
selected  to  direct  operations  on  so  important 
an  occasion.  I  could  understand  it  if  the 
Imperialists  took  refuge  in  the  Celtic  cloud, 
conceived  Colthurst  as  full  of  a  mystic  frenzy 
like  the  chieftain  who  fought  with  the  sea, 
pleaded  that  Piggott  was  a  poet  whose  pen 
ran  away  with  him,  or  that  Sergeant  Sheridan 
romanced  like  a  real  stage  Irishman.     I  could 


134  Irish  Impressions 

understand  it  if  they  declared  that  it  was 
merely  in  the  elvish  ecstasy  described  by  Mr. 
Yeats  that  Sir  Edward  Carson,  that  famous 
First  Lord  of  the  Admiralty,  rode  on  the  top 
of  the  dishevelled  wave;  and  Mr.  Walter 
Long,  that  great  Agricultural  Minister, 
danced  upon  the  mountains  like  a  flame.  It 
is  far  more  absurd  to  suggest  that  no  man 
can  see  the  green  flag  unless  he  has  some 
green  in  his  eye.  In  truth  this  association 
between  an  Irish  sympathy  and  an  Irish  an- 
cestry, is  just  as  insulting  as  the  old  jibe  of 
Buckingham,  about  an  Irish  interest  or  an 
Irish  understanding. 

It  may  seem  fanciful  to  say  of  the  Irish 
nationalists  that  they  are  sometimes  too  Irish 
to  be  national.  Yet  this  is  really  the  case  in 
those  who  would  turn  nationality  from  a  sanc- 
tity to  a  secret.  That  is,  they  are  turning  it 
from  something  which  every  one  else  ought 
to  respect,  to  something  which  no  one  else  can 
understand.  Nationalism  is  a  nobler  thing 
even  than  patriotism;  for  nationalism  appeals 
to  a  law  of  nations;  it  implies  that  a  nation  is 
a  normal  thing,  and  therefore  one  of  a  num- 


The  Mistake  of  Irelarid  135 

ber  of  normal  things.  It  is  impossible  to  have 
a  nation  without  Christendom;  as  it  is  im- 
possible to  have  a  citizen  without  a  city.  Now 
normally  speaking  this  is  better  understood 
in  Ireland  than  in  England;  but  the  Irish 
have  an  opposite  exaggeration  and  error;  and 
tend  in  some  cases  to  the  cult  of  real  insular- 
ity. In  this  sense  it  is  true  to  say  that  the 
error  is  indicated  in  the  very  name  of  Sinn 
Fein.  But  I  think  it  is  even  more  encour- 
aged, in  a  cloudier  and  therefore  more  peril- 
ous fashion,  by  much  that  is  otherwise  valu- 
able in  the  cult  of  the  Celts  and  the  study  of 
the  old  Irish  language.  It  is  a  great  mistake 
for  a  man  to  defend  himself  as  a  Celt  when 
he  might  defend  himself  as  an  Irishman.  For 
the  former  defence  will  turn  on  some  tricky 
question  of  temperament,  while  the  latter  will 
turn  on  the  central  pivot  of  morals.  Celti- 
cism, by  itself,  might  lead  to  all  the  racial  ex- 
travagances which  have  lately  led  more  bar- 
baric races  a  dance.  Celts  also  might  come 
to  claim,  not  that  their  nation  is  a  normal 
thing,  but  that  their  race  is  a  unique  thing. 
Celts  also  might  end  by  arguing  not  for  an 


136  Irish  Impressions 

equality  founded  on  the  respect  for  bound- 
aries, but  for  an  aristocracy  founded  on  the 
ramification  of  blood.  Celts  also  might  come 
to  pitting  the  prehistoric  against  the  historic, 
the  heathen  against  the  Christian,  and  in  that 
sense  the  barbaric  against  the  civilised.  In 
that  sense  I  confess  I  do  not  care  about  Celts; 
they  are  too  like  Teutons. 

Now  of  course  every  one  knows  that  there 
is  practically  no  such  danger  of  Celtic  Impe- 
rialism. Mr.  Lloyd  George  will  not  attempt 
to  annex  Brittany  as  a  natural  part  of  Brit- 
ain. No  Tories,  however  antiquated,  will  ex- 
tend their  empire  in  the  name  of  the  Buff  and 
Blue  of  the  Ancient  Britons.  Nor  is  there 
the  least  likelihood  that  the  Irish  will  over- 
run Scotland  on  the  plea  of  an  Irish  origin 
for  the  old  name  of  the  Scots;  or  that  they  will 
set  up  an  Irish  capital  at  Stratford-on-Avon 
merely  because  avon  is  the  Celtic  word  for 
water.  That  is  the  sort  of  thing  that  Teu- 
tonic ethnologists  do;  but  Celts  are  not  quite 
so  stupid  as  that,  even  when  they  are  ethnol- 
ogists. It  may  be  suggested  that  this  is  be- 
cause even  prehistoric  Celts  seem  to  have  been 


The  Mistake  of  Ireland  137 

rather  more  civilised  than  historic  Teutons. 
And  indeed  I  have  seen  ornaments  and  uten- 
sils in  the  admirable  Dublin  museum,  sugges- 
tive of  a  society  of  immense  antiquity,  and 
much  more  advanced  in  the  arts  of  life  than 
the  Prussians  were,  only  a  few  centuries  ago. 
For  instance,  there  was  actually  what  ap- 
peared to  be  a  safety  razor.  I  doubt  if  the 
godlike  Goths  had  much  use  for  a  razor;  or 
if  they  had,  if  it  was  altogether  safe.  Nor 
am  I  so  dull  as  not  to  be  stirred  to  an  imag- 
inative sympathy  with  the  instinct  of  modern 
Irish  poetry  to  praise  this  primordial  and 
mysterious  order,  even  as  a  sort  of  pagan 
paradise;  and  that  not  as  regarding  a  legend 
as  a  sort  of  lie,  but  a  tradition  as  a  sort  of 
truth.  It  is  but  another  hint  of  a  suggestion, 
huge,  yet  hidden;  that  civilisation  is  older 
than  barbarism;  and  that  the  further  we  go 
back  into  pagan  origins,  the  nearer  we  come 
to  the  great  Christian  origin  of  the  Fall.  But 
whatever  credit  or  sympathy  be  due  to  the 
cult  of  Celtic  origins  in  its  proper  place,  it 
is  none  of  these  things  that  really  prevents 
Celticism  from  being  a  barbarous  imperialism 


138  Irish  Impressions 

like  Teutonlsm.  The  thing  that  prevents  im- 
perialism is  nationalism.  It  was  exactly  be- 
cause Germany  was  not  a  nation  that  it  de- 
sired more  and  more  to  be  an  empire.  For 
a  patriot  is  a  sort  of  lover,  and  a  lover  is  a 
sort  of  artist;  and  the  artist  will  always  love 
a  shape  too  much  to  wish  it  to  grow  shapeless, 
even  in  order  to  grow  large.  A  group  of 
Teutonic  tribes  will  not  care  how  many  other 
tribes  they  destroy  or  absorb;  and  Celtic  tribes 
when  they  were  heathen  may  have  acted,  for 
all  I  know,  in  the  same  way.  But  the  civil- 
ised Irish  nation,  a  part  and  product  of  Chris- 
tendom, has  certainly  no  desire  to  be  entan- 
gled with  other  tribes  or  to  have  its  outlines 
blurred  with  great  blots  like  Liverpool  and 
Glasgow,  as  well  as  Belfast.  In  that  sense  it 
is  far  too  self-conscious  to  be  selfish.  Its  in- 
dividuality may,  as  I  shall  suggest,  make  it  too 
insular ;  it  will  not  make  it  too  imperial.  This 
is  a  merit  in  nationalism  too  little  noted;  that 
even  what  is  called  its  narrowness  is  not 
merely  a  barrier  to  invasion,  but  a  barrier  to 
expansion.  Therefore,  with  all  respect  to  the 
prehistoric  Celts,  I  feel  more  at  home  with 


The  Mistake  of  Ireland  139 

the  good  if  sometimes  mad  Cliristian  gentle- 
man of  tiie  Young  Ireland  movement,  or  even 
the  Easter  Rebellion.  I  should  feel  more 
safe  with  Meagher  of  the  Sword  than  with 
the  primitive  Celt  of  the  safety  razor.  The 
microscopic  meanness  of  the  Mid-Victorian 
English  writers,  when  they  wrote  about  Irish 
patriots,  could  see  nothing  but  a  very  small 
joke  in  modern  rebels  thinking  themselves 
worthy  to  take  the  titles  of  antique  kings;  but 
the  only  doubt  I  should  have,  if  I  had  any, 
is  whether  the  heathen  kings  were  worthy  of 
the  Christian  rebels.  I  am  much  more  sure 
of  the  heroism  of  the  modern  Fenians  than  of 
the  ancient  ones. 

Of  the  artistic  side  of  the  cult  of  the  Celts 
I  do  not  especially  speak  here.  And  indeed 
its  importance,  especially  to  the  Irish,  may 
easily  be  exaggerated.  Mr.  W.  B.  Yeats  long 
ago  dissociated  himself  from  a  merely  racial 
theory  of  Irish  poetry;  and  Mr.  W.  B.  Yeats 
thinks  as  hard  as  he  talks.  I  often  entirely 
disagree  with  him;  but  I  disagree  far  more 
with  the  people  who  find  him  a  poetical  opi- 
ate, where  I  always  find  him  a  logical  stim- 


140  Irish  Impressions 


ulant.  For  the  rest,  Celticism  in  some  aspects 
is  largely  a  conspiracy  for  leading  the  Eng- 
lishman a  dance,  if  it  be  a  fairy  dance.  I 
suspect  that  many  names  and  announcements 
are  printed  in  Gaelic,  not  because  Irishmen 
can  read  them,  but  because  Englishmen  can't. 
The  other  great  modern  mystic  in  Dublin, 
"  A.  E.,"  entertained  us  first  by  telling  an 
English  lady  present  that  she  would  never  re- 
sist the  Celtic  atmosphere,  struggle  how  she 
might,  but  would  soon  be  wandering  in  the 
mountain  mists  with  a  fillet  round  her  head; 
which  fate  had  apparently  overtaken  the  son 
or  nephew  of  an  Anglican  bishop  who  had 
strayed  into  those  parts.  The  English  lady, 
whom  I  happen  to  know  rather  well,  made 
the  characteristic  announcement  that  she 
would  go  to  Paris  when  she  felt  it  coming 
on.  But  it  seemed  to  me  that  such  drastic 
action  was  hardly  necessary,  and  that  there 
was  comparatively  little  cause  for  alarm;  see- 
ing that  the  mountain  mists  certainly  had  not 
had  that  effect  on  the  people  who  happen  to 
live  in  the  mountains.  I  knew  that  A.  E. 
knew,  even  better  than  I  did,  that  Irish  peas- 


The  Mistake  of  Ireland  141 

ants  do  not  wander  about  in  fillets,  or  indeed 
wander  about  at  all,  having  plenty  of  much 
better  work  to  do.  And  since  the  Celtic  at- 
mosphere had  no  perceptible  effect  on  the 
Celts,  I  felt  no  alarm  about  its  ef^fect  on  the 
Saxons.  But  the  only  thing  involved,  by  way 
of  an  effect  on  the  Saxons,  was  a  practical 
joke  on  the  Saxons;  which  may,  however, 
have  lasted  longer  in  the  case  of  the  bishop's 
nephew  than  it  did  in  mine.  Anyhow,  I  con- 
tinued to  move  about  (like  Atalanta  in  Caly- 
don)  with  unchapleted  hair,  with  unfilleted 
cheek;  and  found  a  sufficient  number  of  Irish 
people  in  the  same  condition  to  prevent  me 
from  feeling  shy.  In  a  word,  all  that  sort 
of  thing  is  simply  Mr.  Russell's  humour,  espe- 
cially his  good  humour,  which  is  of  a  golden 
and  godlike  sort.  And  a  man  would  be  very 
much  misled  by  the  practical  joke  if  he  does 
not  realise  that  the  joker  is  a  practical  man. 
On  the  desk  in  front  of  him  as  he  spoke  were 
business  papers  of  reports  and  statistics,  much 
more  concerned  with  fillets  of  veal  than  fillets 
of  vision.  That  is  the  essential  fact  about  all 
this  side  of  such  men  in  Ireland.    We  may 


142  hish  Impressions 

think  the  Celtic  ghost  a  turnip  ghost;  but  we 
can  only  doubt  the  reality  of  the  ghost;  there 
is  no  doubt  of  the  reality  of  the  turnip. 

But  if  the  Celtic  pose  be  a  piece  of  the 
Celtic  ornament,  the  spirit  that  produced  it 
does  also  produce  some  more  serious  ten- 
dencies to  the  segregation  of  Ireland,  one 
might  almost  say  the  secretion  of  Ireland. 

In  this  sense,  it  is  true  that  there  is  too 
much  separatism  in  Ireland.  I  do  not  speak 
of  separation  from  England;  which,  as  I  have 
said,  happened  long  ago  in  the  only  serious 
sense,  and  is  a  condition  to  be  assumed,  not  a 
conclusion  to  be  avoided.  Nor  do  I  mean 
separation  from  a  federation  of  free  states  un- 
fortunately known  as  the  British  Empire;  for 
that  is  a  conclusion  that  could  still  be  avoided 
with  a  little  common  sense  and  common 
honesty  in  our  own  politics.  I  mean  separa- 
tion from  Europe,  from  the  common  Chris- 
tian civilisation  by  whose  law  the  nations  live. 
I  would  be  understood  as  speaking  here  of 
exceptions  rather  than  the  rule;  for  the  rule 
is  rather  the  other  way.  The  Catholic  re- 
ligion, the  most  fundamental  fact  in  Ireland, 


The  Mistake  of  Ireland  143 

is  itself  a  permanent  communication  with  the 
Continent.  So,  as  I  have  said,  is  the  free 
peasantry  which  is  so  often  the  economic  ex- 
pression of  the  same  faith.  Mr.  James 
Stephens,  himself  a  spiritually  detached  man 
of  genius,  told  me  with  great  humour  a  story 
which  is  also  at  least  a  symbol.  A  Catholic 
priest,  after  a  convivial  conversation  and 
plenty  of  good  wine,  said  to  him  confi- 
dentially: "You  ought  to  be  a  Catholic. 
You  can  be  saved  without  being  a  Catholic; 
but  you  can't  be  Irish  without  being  a 
Catholic." 

Nevertheless,  the  exceptions  are  large 
enough  to  be  dangers;  and  twice  lately,  I 
think,  they  have  brought  Ireland  into  danger. 
This  is  the  age  of  minorities;  of  groups  that 
rule  rather  than  represent.  And  the  two 
largest  parties  in  Ireland,  though  more  repre- 
sentative than  most  parties  in  England,  were 
too  much  affected,  I  fancy,  by  the  modern 
fashion,  expressed  in  the  world  of  fads  by 
being  Celtic  rather  than  Catholic.  They 
were  just  a  little  too  Insular  to  accept  the  old 
unconscious  wave  of  Christendom;  the  Cru- 


144  Irish  Impressions 


sade.  But  the  case  was  more  extraordinary 
than  that.  They  were  even  too  insular  to  ap- 
preciate, not  so  much  their  own  international 
needs,  as  their  own  international  importance. 
It  may  seem  a  strange  paradox  to  say  that 
both  nationalist  parties  underrated  Ireland  as 
a  nation.  It  may  seem  a  more  startling  para- 
dox to  say  that  in  this  the  most  nationalist  was 
the  least  national.  Yet  I  think  I  can  explain, 
however  roughly,  what  I  mean  by  saying  that 
this  is  so. 

It  is  primarily  Sinn  Fein,  or  the  extreme 
national  party,  which  thus  relatively  failed  to 
realise  that  Ireland  is  a  nation.  At  least  it 
failed  in  nationalism  exactly  so  far  as  it  failed 
to  intervene  in  the  war  of  the  nations  against 
Prussian  imperialism.  For  its  argument  in- 
volved, unconsciously,  the  proposition  that 
Ireland  is  not  a  nation;  that  Ireland  is  a  tribe 
or  a  settlement,  or  a  chance  sprinkling  of 
aborigines.  If  the  Irish  were  savages  op- 
pressed by  the  British  Empire,  they  might 
well  be  indifferent  to  the  fate  of  the  British 
Empire;  but  as  they  were  civilised  men,  they 
could  not  be  indifferent  to  the  fate  of  civilisa- 


The  Mistake  of  Ireland.  145 

tlon.  The  Kaffirs  might  conceivably  be 
better  off  if  the  whole  system  of  white  coloni- 
sation, Boer  and  British,  broke  down  and  dis- 
appeared altogether.  The  Irish  might  sym- 
pathise with  the  Kaffirs;  but  they  would  not 
like  to  be  classed  with  the  Kaffirs.  Hotten- 
tots might  have  a  sort  of  Hottentot  happiness 
if  the  last  European  city  had  fallen  in  ruins, 
or  the  last  European  had  died  in  torments. 
But  the  Irish  would  never  be  Hottentots,  even 
if  they  were  Pro-Hottentots.  In  other  words, 
if  the  Irish  were  what  Cromwell  thought  they 
were,  they  might  well  confine  their  attention 
to  Hell  and  Connaught;  and  have  no  sym- 
pathy to  spare  for  France.  But  if  the  Irish 
are  what  Wolfe  Tone  thought  they  were,  they 
must  be  interested  in  France,  as  he  was  inter- 
ested in  France.  In  short,  if  the  Irish  are 
barbarians,  they  need  not  trouble  about  other 
barbarians  sacking  the  cities  of  the  world;  but 
if  they  are  citizens,  they  must  trouble  about 
the  cities  that  are  sacked.  This  is  the  deep 
and  real  reason  why  their  alienation  from  the 
Allied  cause  was  a  disaster  for  their  own  na- 
tional cause.     It  was  not  because  it  gave  fools 


146  Irish  Impressions 

a  chance  of  complaining  that  they  were  Anti- 
English.  It  was  because  it  gave  much 
cleverer  people  the  chance  of  complaining 
that  they  were  Anti-European.  I  entirely 
agree  that  the  alienation  was  chiefly  the  fault 
of  the  English  Government;  I  even  agree  that 
it  required  an  abnormal  imaginative  mag- 
nanimity for  an  Irishman  to  do  his  duty  to 
Ireland,  in  spite  of  being  so  insolently  told  to 
do  it.  But  it  is  none  the  less  true  that  Ireland 
to-day  would  be  ten  thousand  miles  nearer 
her  deliverance  if  the  Irishman  could  have 
made  that  effort;  if  he  had  realised  that  the 
thing  ought  to  be  done,  not  because  such 
rulers  wanted  it,  but  rather  although  they 
wanted  it. 

But  the  much  more  curious  fact  Is  this. 
There  were  any  number  of  Irishmen,  and 
those  among  the  most  Irish,  who  did  realise 
this ;  who  realised  it  with  so  sublime  a  sincer- 
ity as  to  fight  for  their  own  enemies  against 
the  world's  enemies;  and  consent  at  once  to  be 
insulted  by  the  English  and  killed  by  the  Ger- 
mans. The  Redmonds  and  the  old  Nation- 
alist party,  if  they  have  indeed  failed,  have 


The  Mistake  of  Ireland  147 

the  right  to  be  reckoned  among  the  most  heroic 
of  all  the  heroic  failures  of  Ireland.  If  theirs 
is  a  lost  cause,  it  is  wholly  worthy  of  a  land 
where  lost  causes  are  never  lost.  But  the 
old  guard  of  Redmond  did  also  in  its  time, 
I  fancy,  fall  into  the  same  particular  and 
curious  error;  but  in  a  more  subtle  way  and 
on  a  seemingly  remote  subject.  They  also, 
whose  motives  like  those  of  the  Sinn  Feiners 
were  entirely  noble,  did  in  one  sense  fail  to  be 
national,  in  the  sense  of  appreciating  the  inter- 
national importance  of  a  nation.  In  their 
case  it  was  a  matter  of  English  and  not 
European  politics;  and  as  their  case  was  much 
more  complicated,  I  speak  with  much  less 
confidence  about  it.  But  I  think  there  was  a 
highly  determining  time  in  politics  when  cer- 
tain Irishmen  got  on  to  the  wrong  side  in  Eng- 
lish politics,  as  other  Irishmen  afterwards  got 
on  to  the  wrong  side  in  European  politics. 
And  by  the  wrong  side,  in  both  cases,  I  not 
only  mean  the  side  that  was  not  consistent 
with  the  truth,  but  the  side  that  was  not  really 
congenial  to  the  Irish.  A  man  may  act 
against  the  body,  even  the  main  body,  of  his 


14!§  Irish  Impressions 

nation;  but  if  he  acts  against  the  soul  of  his 
nation,  even  to  save  it,  he  and  his  nation  suffer. 
I  can  best  explain  w^hat  I  mean  by  reaffirm- 
ing the  reality  which  an  English  visitor  really 
found  in  Irish  politics,  towards  the  end  of  the 
war.  It  may  seem  odd  to  say  that  the  most 
hopeful  fact  I  found,  for  Anglo-Irish  rela- 
tions, was  the  fury  with  which  the  Irish  were 
all  accusing  the  English  of  perjury  and 
treason.  Yet  this  was  my  solid  and  sincere 
impression;  the  happiest  omen  was  the  hatred 
aroused  by  the  disappointment  over  Home 
Rule.  For  men  are  not  furious  unless  they 
are  disappointed  of  something  they  really 
want;  and  men  are  not  disappointed  except 
about  something  they  were  really  ready  to 
accept.  If  Ireland  had  been  entirely  in 
favour  of  entire  separation,  the  loss  of  Home 
Rule  would  not  be  felt  as  a  loss,  but  if  any- 
thing as  an  escape.  But  it  is  felt  bitterly  and 
savagely  as  a  loss;  to  that  at  least  I  can  testify 
with  entire  certainty.  I  may  or  may  not  be 
right  in  the  belief  I  build  on  it;  but  I  believe 
it  would  still  be  felt  as  a  gain;  that  Dominion 
Home  Rule  would  in  the  long  run  satisfy  Ire- 


The  Mistake  of  Ireland  149 


land.     But  it  would  satisfy  her  if  it  were 
given  to  her,  not  if  it  were  promised  to  her. 
As  it  is,  the   Irish   regard  our  government 
simply  as  a  liar  who  has  broken  his  word;  I 
cannot  express  how  big  and  black  that  simple 
idea  bulks  in  the  landscape  and  blocks  up  the 
road.     And  without  professing  to  regard  it  as 
quite  so  simple,  I  regard  it  as  substantially 
true.     It  is,  upon  any  argument,  an  astound- 
ing thing  the  King,  Lords,  and  Commons  of 
a  great  nation  should  record  on  its  statute- 
book  that  a  law  exists,  and  then  illegally  re- 
verse it  in  answer  to  the  pressure  of  private 
persons.     It  is,  and  rnust  be,  for  the  people 
benefited  by  the  law,  an  act  of  treason.     The 
Irish  v/ere  not  wrong  in  thinking  it  an  act  of 
treason,  even  in  the  sense  of  treachery  and 
trickery.     Where  they  were  wrong,  I  regret 
to  say,  was  in  talking  of  it  as  if  it  were  the 
one  supreme  solitary  example  of  such  trick- 
ery; when  the  whole  of  our  politics  were  full 
of  such  tricks.     In  short,  the  loss  of  justice 
for  Ireland  was  simply  a  part  of  the  loss  of 
justice  in  England;  the  loss  of  all  moral  au- 
thority in  government,  the  loss  of  the  popu- 


150  Irish  Impressions 

larity  of  Parliament,  the  secret  plutocracy 
which  makes  it  easy  to  take  a  bribe  or  break 
a  pledge,  the  corruption  that  can  pass  un- 
popular laws  or  promote  discredited  men. 
The  lawgiver  cannot  enforce  his  law  because, 
whether  or  no  the  law  be  popular,  the  law- 
giver is  v/holly  unpopular,  and  is  perpetually 
passing  wholly  unpopular  laws.  Intrigue 
has  been  substituted  for  government;  and  the 
.public  man  cannot  appeal  to  the  public  be- 
cause all  the  most  important  part  of  his  policy 
is  conducted  in  private.  The  modern  poli- 
tician conducts  his  public  life  in  private. 
He  sometimes  condescends  to  make  up  for  it 
by  affecting  to  conduct  his  private  life  in 
public.  He  will  put  his  baby  or  his  birthday 
book  into  the  illustrated  papers;  it  is  his  deal- 
ings with  the  colossal  millions  of  the  cosmo- 
politan millionaires  that  he  puts  in  his  pocket 
or  his  private  safe.  We  are  allowed  to  know 
all  about  his  dogs  and  cats ;  but  not  about  those 
larger  and  more  dangerous  animals,  his  bulls 
and  bears. 

Now  there  was  a  moment  when  England 
had  an  opportunity  of  breaking  down  this 


Tlie  Mistake  of  Ireland  151 

Parliamentary  evil,  as  Europe  afterwards  had 
an  opportunity  (which  it  fortunately  took)  of 
breaking  down  the  Prussian  evil.  The  cor- 
ruption was  common  to  both  parties;  but  the 
chance  of  exposing  it  happened  to  occur 
under  the  rule  of  a  Home  Rule  party;  which 
the  Nationalists  supported  solely  for  the  sake 
of  Home  Rule.  In  the  Marconi  Case  they 
consented  to  whitewash  the  tricks  of  Jew 
jobbers  whom  they  must  have  despised;  just 
as  some  of  the  Sinn  Feiners  afterwards  con- 
sented to  whitewash  the  wickedness  of  Prus- 
sian bullies  whom  they  also  must  have  de- 
spised. In  both  cases  the  motive  was  wholly 
disinterested  and  even  idealistic.  It  was  the 
practicality  that  was  unpractical.  I  was  one 
of  a  small  group  which  protested  against  the 
hushing  up  of  the  Marconi  affair,  but  we  al- 
>vays  did  justice  to  the  patriotic  intentions  of 
the  Irish  who  allowed  it.  But  we  based  our 
criticism  of  their  strategy  on  the  principle  of 
falsus  in  uno,  falsus  in  omnibus.  The  man 
who  will  cheat  you  about  one  thing  will  cheat 
you  about  another.  The  men  who  will  lie  to 
you  about  Marconi,  will  lie  to  you  about 


152  Irish  Impressions 

Home  Rule.  The  political  conventions  that 
allow  of  dealing  in  Marconis  at  one  price  for 
the  party,  and  another  price  for  oneself,  are 
conventions  that  also  allow  of  telling  one  story 
to  Mr.  John  Redmond  and  another  to  Sir 
Edward  Carson.  The  man  who  will  imply 
one  state  of  things  when  talking  at  large  in 
Parliament,  and  another  state  of  things  when 
put  into  a  witness-box  in  court,  is  the  ^ame 
sort  of  man  who  will  promise  an  Irish  settle- 
ment in  the  hope  that  it  may  fail;  and  then 
withdraw  it  for  fear  it  should  succeed. 
Among  the  many  muddle-headed  modern  at- 
tempts to  coerce  the  Christian  poor  to  the 
Moslem  dogma  about  wine  and  beer,  one  was 
concerned  with  abuse  by  loafers  or  tipplers  of 
the  privilege  of  the  Sunday  traveller.  It  was 
suggested  that  the  travellers'  claims  were  in 
everv  sense  travellers'  tales.  It  was  therefore 
proposed  that  the  limit  of  three  miles  should 
be  extended  to  six ;  as  if  it  were  any  harder  for 
a  liar  to  say  he  had  walked  six  miles  than 
three.  The  politicians  might  be  as  ready  to 
promise  to  walk  the  six  miles  to  an  Irish  Re- 
public as  the  three  miles  to  an  Irish  Parlia- 


The  Mistake  of  Ireland  153 

ment.  But  Sinn  Fein  is  mistaken  in  suppos- 
ing that  any  change  of  theoretic  claim  meets 
the  problem  of  corruption.  Those  who 
would  break  their  word  to  Redmond  would 
certainly  break  it  to  De  Valera.  We  urged 
all  these  things  on  the  Nationalists  whose  na- 
tional cause  we  supported ;  we  asked  them  to 
follow  their  larger  popular  instincts,  break 
down  a  corrupt  oligarchy,  and  let  a  real  popu- 
lar parliament  in  England  give  a  real  popular 
parliament  to  Ireland.  With  entirely  hon- 
ourable motives,  they  adhered  to  the  narrower 
conception  of  their  national  duty.  They 
sacrificed  everything  for  Home  Rule;  even 
their  own  profoundly  national  emotion  of  con- 
tempt. For  the  sake  of  Home  Rule,  or  the 
solemn  promise  of  Home  Rule,  they  kept  such 
men  in  power;  and  for  their  reward  they 
found  that  such  men  were  still  in  power;  and 
Home  Rule  was  gone. 

What  I  mean  about  the  Nationalist  Party, 
and  what  may  be  called  its  prophetic  shadow 
of  the  Sinn  Fein  mistake,  may  well  be  sym- 
bolised in  one  of  the  noblest  figures  of  that 
party  or  any  party.     An  Irish  poet,  talking 


154!  Irish  Impressions 

to  me  about  the  pointed  diction  of  the  Irish 
peasant,  said  he  had  recently  rejoiced  in  the 
society  of  a  drunken  Kerry  farmer,  whose 
conversation  was  a  litany  of  questions  about 
everything  in  heaven  and  earth,  each  ending 
with  a  sort  of  chorus  of  ''Will  ye  tell  me 
that  now?"  And  at  the  end  of  all  he  said 
abruptly,  "Did  ye  know  Tom  Kettle?"  and 
on  my  friend  the  poet  assenting,  the  farmer 
said,  as  if  in  triumph,  "And  why  are  so  many 
people  alive  that  ought  to  be  dead,  and  so 
many  people  dead  that  ought  to  be  alive? 
Will  ye  tell  me  that  now?"  That  is  not  un- 
worthy of  an  old  heroic  poem,  and  therefore 
not  unworthy  of  the  hero  and  poet  of  whom 
it  was  spoken.  "Patroclus  died,  who  was  a 
better  man  than  you."  Thomas  Michael 
Kettle  was  perhaps  the  greatest  example  of 
that  greatness  of  spirit  which  was  so  ill  re- 
warded on  both  sides  of  the  channel  and  of  the 
quarrel,  which  marked  Redmond's  brother 
and  so  many  of  Redmond's  followers.  He 
was  a  wit,  a  scholar,  an  orator,  a  man  am- 
bitious in  all  the  arts  of  peace;  and  he  fell 
fighting  the  barbarians  because  he  was  too 


The  31istake  of  Ireland  155 

good  a  European  to  use  the  barbarians  against 
England,  as  England  a  hundred  years  before 
had  used  the  barbarians  against  Ireland. 
There  is  nothing  to  be  said  of  such  things  ex- 
cept what  the  drunken  farmer  said,  unless  it 
be  a  verse  from  a  familiar  ballad  on  a  very 
remote  topic,  which  happens  to  express  my 
own  most  immediate  feelings  about  politics 
and  reconstruction  after  the  decimation  of 
the  great  war. 

"  The  many  men  so  beautiful 
And  they  all  dead  did  lie 
And  a  thousand  thousand  slimy  things 
Lived  on,  and  so  did  I." 

It  is  not  a  reflection  that  adds  any  inordinate 
self-satisfaction  to  the  fact  of  one's  own  sur- 
vival. 

In  turning  over  a  collection  of  Kettle's  ex- 
traordinary varied  and  vigorous  writings, 
which  contain  some  of  the  most  pointed  and 
piercing  criticisms  of  materialism,  of  modern 
capitalism  and  mental  and  moral  anarchism 
generally,  I  came  on  a  very  interesting  criti- 


156  Irish  Impressions 

cism  of  myself  and  my  friends  in  our  Marconi 
agitation;  a  suggestion,  on  a  note  of  genial 
cynicism,  that  we  were  asking  for  an  im- 
possible political  purity;  a  suggestion  which, 
knowing  it  to  be  patriotic,  I  will  venture  to 
call  pathetic.  I  will  not  now  return  on  such 
disagreements,  a  man  wath  whom  I  so  uni- 
versally agree;  but  it  will  not  be  unfair  to 
find  here  an  exact  illustration  of  what  I  mean 
by  saying  that  the  national  leaders,  so  far 
from  merely  failing  as  wild  Irishmen,  only 
failed  when  they  were  not  instinctive  enough, 
that  is,  not  Irish  enough.  Kettle  was  a 
patriot  whose  impulse  was  practical  and 
whose  policy  was  impolitic.  Here  also  the 
Nationalist  underrated  the  importance  of  the 
intervention  of  his  own  nationality.  Kettle 
left  a  fine  and  even  terrible  poem,  asking  if 
his  sacrifices  were  in  vain,  and  whether  he  and 
his  people  were  again  being  betrayed.  I 
think  nobody  can  deny  that  he  was  betrayed; 
and  it  was  not  by  the  English  soldiers  with 
whom  he  marched  to  war,  but  by  those  very 
English  politicians  with  whom  he  sacrificed 
so  much  to  remain  at  peace.   No  man  will  ever 


The  Mistake  of  Ireland  157 

dare  to  say  his  death  in  battle  was  in  vain,  not 
only  because  in  the  highest  sense  it  could  never 
be,  but  because  even  in  the  lowest  sense  it  was 
not.  He  hated  the  icy  insolence  of  Prussia; 
and  that  ice  is  broken,  and  already  as  weak  as 
water.  As  Carlyle  said  of  a  far  lesser  thing, 
that  at  least  will  never  through  unending  ages 
insult  the  face  of  the  sun  any  more.  The 
point  is  here  that  if  any  part  of  his  fine  work 
was  in  vain,  it  was  certainly  not  the  reckless 
romantic  part;  it  was  precisely  the  plodding 
parliamentary  part.  None  can  say  that  the 
weary  marching  and  counter-marching  in 
France  was  a  thing  thrown  away;  not  only  in 
the  sense  which  consecrates  all  footprints 
along  such  a  via  cruets,  or  highway  of  the 
army  of  martyrs;  but  also  in  the  perfectly 
practical  sense,  that  the  army  was  going  some- 
where, and  that  it  got  there.  But  it  might 
possibly  be  said  that  the  weary  marching  and 
counter-marching  at  Westminster,  in  and  out 
of  a  division  lobby,  belonged  to  what  the 
French  call  the  sal/e  des  pas  perdus.  If  any- 
thing was  practical  it  was  the  visionary  ad- 
venture; if  anything  was  unpractical  it  was 


158  Iiish  Impressions 

the  practical  compromise.  He  and  his 
friends  were  betrayed  by  the  men  whose  cor- 
ruptions they  had  contemptuously  condoned, 
far  more  than  by  the  men  w^hose  bigotries  they 
had  indignantly  denounced.  There  dark-' 
ened  about  them  treason  and  disappointment, 
and  he  that  was  the  happiest  died  in  battle; 
and  one  who  knew  and  loved  him  spoke  to 
me  for  a  million  others  in  saying:  "And  now 
we  will  not  give  you  a  dead  dog  until  you 
keep  your  word." 


VIII — An  Example  and  a  Question 

WE  all  had  occasion  to  rejoice  at  the 
return  of  Sherlock  Holmes  when 
he  was  supposed  to  be  dead;  and 
I  presume  we  may  soon  rejoice  in 
his  return  even  when  he  is  really  dead.  Sir 
Arthur  Conan  Doyle,  in  his  widespread  new 
campaign  in  favour  of  Spiritualism,  ought  at 
least  to  delight  us  with  the  comedy  of  Holmes 
as  a  control  and  Watson  as  a  medium.  But  I 
have  for  the  moment  a  use  for  the  great 
detective  not  concerned  with  the  psychical 
side  of  the  question.  Of  that  I  will  only  say, 
in  passing,  that  in  this  as  in  many  other  cases, 
I  find  myself  in  agreement  with  an  authority 
about  where  the  line  is  drawn  between  good 
and  bad,  but  have  the  misfortune  to  think  his 
good  bad,  and  his  bad  good.  Sir  Arthur 
explains  that  he  would  lift  Spiritualism  to  a 
graver  and  more  elevated  plane  of  idealism; 

169 


160  Irish  Impressions 

and  that  he  quite  agrees  with  his  critics  that 
the  mere  tricks  with  tables  and  chairs  are 
grotesque  and  vulgar.  I  think  this  quite  true 
if  turned  upside  down,  like  the  table.  I  do 
not  mind  the  grotesque  and  vulgar  part  of 
Spiritualism;  what  I  object  to  is  the  grave  and 
elevating  part.  After  all,  a  miracle  is  a 
miracle  and  means  something;  it  means  that 
Materialism  is  nonsense.  But  it  is  not  true 
that  a  message  is  always  a  message;  and  it 
sometimes  only  means  that  Spiritualism  is  also 
nonsense.  If  the  table  at  which  I  am  now 
writing  takes  to  itself  wings  and  flies  out  of 
the  window,  perhaps  carrying  me  along  with 
it,  the  incident  will  arouse  in  me  a  real  intelli- 
gent interest,  verging  on  surprise.  But  if  the 
pen  with  which  I  am  writing  begins  to  scrawl 
all  by  itself,  the  sort  of  things  I  have  seen  in 
spirit  writing;  if  it  begins  to  say  that  all  things 
are  aspects  of  universal  purity  and  peace,  and 
so  on,  why,  then  I  shall  not  only  be  annoyed, 
but  also  bored.  If  a  great  man  like  the  late 
Sir  William  Crookes  says  a  table  went  walk- 
ing upstairs,  I  am  impressed  by  the  news;  but 
not  by  news  from  nowhere  to  the  effect  that 


An  Example  and  a  Question         161 

all  men  are  perpetually  going  upstairs,  up  a 
spiritual  staircase,  which  seems  to  be  as 
mechanical  and  labour-saving  as  a  moving 
staircase  at  Charing  Cross.  Moreover,  even 
a  benevolent  spirit  might  conceivably  throw 
the  furniture  about  merely  for  fun;  whereas 
I  doubt  if  anything  but  a  devil  from  hell 
would  say  that  all  things  are  aspects  of  purity 
and  peace. 

But  I  am  here  taking  from  the  Spiritualistic 
articles  a  text  that  has  nothing  to  do  with 
Spiritualism.  In  a  recent  contribution  to 
Nash's  Magazine,  Sir  Arthur  Conan  Doyle 
remarks  very  truly  that  the  modern  world  is 
weary  and  wicked  and  in  need  of  a  religion; 
and  he  gives  examples  of  its  more  typical  and 
terrible  corruptions.  It  is  perhaps  natural 
that  he  should  revert  to  the  case  of  the  Congo, 
and  talk  of  it  in  the  torrid  fashion  which  re- 
calls the  days  when  Morel  and  Casement  had 
some  credit  in  English  politics.  We  have 
since  had  an  opportunity  of  judging  the  real 
attitude  of  a  man  like  Morel  in  the  plainest 
case  of  black  and  white  injustice  that  the 
world  has  ever  seen.     It  was  at  once  a  replica 


162  Irish  Impressions 

and  a  reversal  of  the  position  expressed  in  the 
Pious  Editor's  Creed;  and  might  roughly  be 
rendered  in  similar  language. 

"  I  do  believe  in  Freedom's  cause 
Ez  fur  away  ez  tropics  are; 
But  Belgians  caught  in  Prussia's  claws 
To  me  less  tempting  topics  are. 
It's  wal  agin  a  foreign  king 
To  rouse  the  chapel's  rigours; 
But  Liberty's  a  kind  of  thing 
yVe  only  owe  to  niggers." 

He  had  of  course  a  lurid  denunciation  of  the 
late  King  Leopold,  of  which  I  will  only  say 
that,  uttered  by  a  Belgian  about  the  Belgian 
king  in  his  own  land  and  lifetime,  it  would  be 
highly  courageous  and  largely  correct;  but 
that  the  parallel  test  is  how  much  truth  was 
told  by  British  journalists  about  British  Kings 
in  their  own  land  and  lifetime ;  and  that  until 
>ve  can  pass  that  test,  such  denunciations  do 
WS  very  little  good.  But  what  interests  me  in 
the  matter  at  the  moment  is  this.  Sir  Arthur 
feels  it  right  to  say  something  about  British 


An  Example  and  a  Question         163 

corruptions,  and  passes  from  the  Congo  to 
Putumayo,  touching  a  little  more  lightly;  for 
even  the  most  honest  Britons  have  an  uncon- 
scious trick  of  touching  more  lightly  on  the 
case  of  British  capitalists.  He  says  that  our 
capitalists  were  not  guilty  of  direct  cruelty, 
but  of  an  attitude  careless  and  even  callous. 
But  what  strikes  me  is  that  Sir  Arthur,  with 
his  taste  for  such  protests  and  inquiries,  need 
not  have  wandered  quite  so  far  from  his  own 
home  as  the  forests  of  South  America. 

Sir  Arthur  Conan  Doyle  is  an  Irishman; 
and  in  his  own  country,  within  my  own  mem- 
ory there  occurred  a  staggering  and  almost 
incredible  crime,  or  series  of  crimes,  which 
were  worthier  than  anything  in  the  world  of 
the  attention  of  Sherlock  Holmes  in  fiction, 
or  Conan  Doyle  in  reality.  It  always  will  be 
a  tribute  to  the  author  of  Sherlock  Holmes 
that  he  did,  about  the  same  time,  do  such  good 
work  In  reality.  He  made  an  admirable  plea 
for  Adolf  Beck  and  Oscar  Slater;  he  was  also 
connected,  I  remember,  with  the  reversal  of 
a  miscarriage  of  justice  in  a  case  of  cattle- 
mutilation.     And  all  this,  while  altogether  t6 


164$  Irish  Impressions 

his  credit,  makes  it  seem  all  the  more  strange 
that  his  talents  could  not  be  used  for,  and  in, 
his  own  home  and  native  country,  in  a  mystery 
that  had  the  dimensions  of  a  monstrosity,  and 
which  did  involve,  if  I  remember  right,  a 
question  of  cattle-maiming.  Anyhow,  it  was 
concerned  with  moonlighters  and  the  charges 
made  against  them,  such  as  the  common  one 
of  cutting  off  the  tails  of  cows.  I  can  imagine 
Sherlock  Holmes  on  such  a  quest,  keen-eyed 
and  relentless,  finding  the  cloven  hoof  of 
some  sinister  and  suspected  cow.  I  can 
imagine  Dr.  Watson,  like  the  cow's  tail,  al- 
ways behind.  I  can  imagine  Sherlock 
Holmes  remarking,  in  a  light  allusive  fashion, 
that  he  himself  had  written  a  little  mono- 
graph on  the  subject  of  cows'  tails;  with  dia- 
grams and  tables  solving  the  great  traditional 
problem  of  how  many  cows'  tails  would  reach 
the  moon;  a  subject  of  extraordinary  interest 
to  moonlighters.  And  I  can  still  more  easily 
imagine  him  saying  afterwards,  having  re- 
sumed the  pipe  and  dressing-gown  of  Baker 
Street,  "A  remarkable  little  problem,  Watson. 
In  some  of  its  features  it  was  perhaps  more 


An  Example  and  a  Question        165 

singular  than  any  you  have  been  good  enough 
to  report.     I  do  not  think  that  even  the  Toot- 
ing Trouser-Stretching  Mystery,  or  the  sin- 
gular little  affair  of  the  Radium  Toothpick, 
offered  more  strange  and  sensational  develop- 
ments."    For  if  the  celebrated  pair  had  really 
tracked  out  the  Irish  crime  I  have  in  mind, 
they  would  have  found  a  story  which,  con- 
sidered merely  as  a  detective  story,  is  by  far 
the  most  dramatic  and  dreadful  of  modern 
times.     Like     nearly     all    such     sensational 
stories,  it  traced  the  crime  to  somebody  far 
higher  in  station  and  responsibility  than  any 
of  those  suspected.     Like  many  of  the  most 
sensational   of   them,   it  actually  traced   the 
crime  to  the  detective  who  was  investigating 
it.     For  if  they  had  really  crawled  about  with 
a   magnifying  glass,   studying  the   supposed 
footprints  of  the  peasants  incriminated,  they 
would  have  found  they  were  made  by  the 
boots  of  the  policeman.     And  the  boots  of  a 
policeman,   one   feels,   are  things   that  even 
Watson  might  recognise. 

I  have  told  the  astounding  story  of  Sergeant 
Sheridan   before;   and   I   shall   often   tell   it 


166  Irish  Impressions 

again.  Hardly  any  English  people  know  it; 
and  I  shall  go  on  telling  it  in  the  hope  that  all 
English  people  may  know  it  some  day.  It 
ought  to  be  first  in  every  collection  of  causes 
celebres,  in  every  book  about  criminals,  in 
every  book  of  historical  mysteries;  and  on  its 
merits  it  would  be.  It  is  not  in  any  of  them. 
It  is  not  there  because  there  is  a  motive,  in 
all  modern  British  plutocracy,  against  finding 
the  big  British  miscarriages  of  justice  where 
they  are  really  to  be  found;  and  that  is  a  great 
deal  nearer  than  Putumayo.  It  is  a  place  far 
more  appropriate  to  the  exploits  of  the 
family  of  the  Doyles.  It  is  called  Ireland ;  and 
in  that  place  a  powerful  British  official  named 
Sheridan  had  been  highly  successful  in  the 
imperial  service  by  convicting  a  series  of  poor 
Irishmen  of  agrarian  crimes.  It  was  after- 
wards discovered  that  the  British  official  had 
carefully  committed  every  one  of  the  crimes 
himself;  and  then,  with  equal  foresight,  per- 
jured himself  to  imprison  innocent  men,  one 
of  whom  lost  his  reason.  Any  one  who  does  not 
know  the  story  will  naturally  ask  what  punish- 
ment was  held  adequate  for  such  a  Neronian 


An  Example  and  a  Question         167 

monster;  I  will  tell  him.  He  was  bowed  out 
of  the  country  like  a  distinguished  stranger, 
his  expenses  politely  paid;  as  if  he  had  been 
delivering  a  series  of  instructive  lectures;  and 
he  is  now  probably  smoking  a  cigar  in  an 
American  hotel,  and  much  more  comfortable 
than  any  poor  policeman  who  has  done  his 
duty.  I  defy  anybody  to  deny  him  a  place  in 
our  literature  about  great  criminals.  Charles 
Peace  escaped  many  times  before  conviction; 
Sheridan  escaped  altogether  after  conviction. 
Jack  the  Ripper  was  safe  because  he  was  un- 
discovered; Sheridan  was  discovered  and  was 
still  safe.  But  I  only  repeat  the  matter  here 
for  two  reasons.  First,  we  may  call  our  rule 
in  Ireland  what  we  like;  we  may  call  it  the 
Union  when  there  is  no  union;  we  may  call 
it  Protestant  ascendancy  when  we  are  no 
longer  Protestants;  or  Teutonic  lordship 
when  we  could  only  be  ashamed  of  being 
Teutons.  But  this  is  what  it  is;  and  every- 
thing else  is  waste  of  words.  And  second, 
because  an  Irish  investigator  of  cattle-maim- 
ing, so  oblivious  of  the  Irish  cow,  is  in  some 
danger  of  figuring  as  an  Irish  bull. 


168  Irish  Impressions 

Anyhow,  that  is  the  real  and  remarkable 
story  of  Sergeant  Sheridan,  and  I  put  it  first 
because  it  is  the  most  practical  test  of  the 
practical  question  of  whether  Ireland  is  mis- 
governed. It  is  strictly  a  fair  test;  for  it  is  a 
test  by  the  minimum  and  an  argument  a 
fortiori.  A  British  official  in  Ireland  can  run 
a  career  of  crime,  punishing  innocent  people 
for  his  own  felonies;  and  when  he  is  found 
out,  he  is  found  to  be  above  the  law.  This 
may  seem  like  putting  things  at  the  worst,  but 
it  is  really  putting  them  at  the  best.  This 
story  was  not  told  us  on  the  word  of  a  wild 
Irish  Fenian,  or  even  a  responsible  Irish  Na- 
tionalist. It  was  told,  word  for  word  as  I 
have  told  it,  by  the  Unionist  Minister  in 
charge  of  the  matter  and  reporting  it,  with 
regret  and  shame,  to  Parliament.  He  was 
not  one  of  the  worst  Irish  Secretaries,  who 
might  be  responsible  for  the  worst  regime; 
on  the  contrary,  he  was  by  far  the  best.  If 
even  he  could  only  partially  restrain  or  reveal 
such  things,  there  can  be  no  deduction  in 
common  sense  except  that  in  the  ordinary 
way  such  things  go  on  gaily  in  the  dark,  with 


An  Example  and  a  Question         169 

nobody  to  reveal  and  nobody  to  restrain  them. 
It  was  not  something  done  in  those  dark  days 
of  torture  and  terrorism,  which  happened  in 
Ireland  a  hundred  years  ago;  and  which 
Englishmen  talk  of  as  having  happened  a 
million  years  ago.  It  was  something  that 
happened  quite  recently,  in  my  own  mature 
manhood,  about  the  time  that  the  better  things 
like  the  Land  Acts  were  already  before  the 
world.  I  remember  writing  to  the  West- 
minster Gazette  to  emphasise  it  when  it  oc- 
curred; but  it  seems  to  have  passed  out  of 
memory  in  an  almost  half-witted  fashion. 
But  that  peephole  into  hell  has  afforded  me 
ever  since  a  horrible  amusement,  when  I  hear 
the  Irish  softly  rebuked  for  remembering  old 
unhappy,  far-off  things  and  wrongs  done  in  the 
Dark  Ages.  Thus  I  was  especially  amused  to 
find  the  Rev.  R.  J.  Campbell  saying  that 
"  Ireland  has  been  petted  and  coddled  more 
than  any  other  part  of  the  British  Isles ";  be- 
cause Mr.  Campbell  was  chiefly  famous  for 
a  comfortable  creed  himself,  for  saying  that 
evil  is  only  "  a  shadow  where  light  should 
be  ";  and  there  is  no  doubt  here  of  his  throw- 


170  l7ish  Impressions 

ing  a  very  black  shadow  where  light  Is  very 
much  required.  I  will  conceive  the  police- 
man at  the  corner  of  the  street  in  which  Mr. 
Campbell  resides,  as  in  the  habit  of  killing  a 
crossing-sweeper  every  now  and  then  for  his 
private  entertainment,  burgling  the  houses  of 
Mr.  Campbell's  neighbours,  cutting  off  the 
tails  of  their  carriage  horses,  and  otherwise 
disporting  himself  by  moonlight  a  fairy.  It 
is  his  custom  to  visit  the  consequences  of  each 
of  these  crimes  upon  the  Rev.  R.  J.  Campbell, 
whom  he  arrests  at  intervals,  successfully  con- 
victs by  perjury,  and  proceeds  to  coddle  in 
penal  servitude.  But  I  have  another  reason 
for  mentioning  Mr.  Campbell,  a  gentleman 
whom  I  heartily  respect  in  many  other  as- 
pects; and  the  reason  is  connected  with  his 
name,  as  it  occurs  in  another  connection  on 
another  page.  It  shows  how  in  anything, 
but  especially  in  anything  coming  from  Ire- 
land, the  old  facts  of  family  and  faith  out- 
weigh a  million  modern  philosophies.  The 
words  in  Who's  Who?—''  Ulster  Protestant  of 
Scottish  ancestry  " — give  the  really  Irish  and 
the  really  honourable  reason  for  Mr.  Camp- 


An  Example  and  a  Question         171 

bell's  extraordinary  remark.  A  man  may 
preach  for  years,  with  radiant  universalism, 
that  many  waters  cannot  quench  love;  but 
Boyne  Water  can.  Mr.  Campbell  appears 
very  promptly  with  what  Kettle  called  "  a 
bucketful  of  Boyne,  to  put  the  sunrise  out." 
I  will  not  take  the  opportunity  of  saying,  like 
the  Ulsterman,  that  there  never  was  treason 
yet  but  a  Campbell  was  at  the  bottom  of  it. 
But  I  will  say  that  there  never  was  Modern- 
ism yet,  but  a  Calvinist  was  at  the  bottom  of 
it.  The  Old  Theology  is  much  livelier  than 
the  New  Theology. 

Many  other  such  true  tales  could  be  told; 
but  what  we  need  here  is  a  sort  of  test.  This 
tale  is  a  test;  because  it  is  the  best  that  could 
be  said,  about  the  best  that  could  be  done,  by 
the  best  Englishman  ruling  Ireland,  in  face 
of  the  English  system  established  there;  and 
it  is  the  best,  or  at  any  rate  the  most,  that  we 
can  know  about  that  system.  Another  truth 
which  might  also  serve  as  a  test,  is  this:  to 
note  among  the  responsible  English  not  only 
their  testimony  against  each  other,  but  their 
testimony   against   themselves.     I    mean   the 


172  Irish  Impressions 

consideration  of  how  very  rapidly  we  realise 
that  our  own  conduct  in  Ireland  has  been 
infamous,  not  in  the  remote  past,  but  in  the 
very  recent  past.  I  have  lived  just  long 
enough  to  see  the  wheel  come  full  circle  inside 
one  generation;  when  I  was  a  schoolboy,  the 
sort  of  Kensington  middle  class,  to  which  I 
belong,  was  nearly  solidly  resisting,  not  only 
the  first  Home  Rule  Bill,  but  any  suggestion 
that  the  Land  League  had  a  leg  to  stand  on, 
or  that  the  landlords  need  do  anything  but 
get  their  rents  or  kick  out  their  tenants.  The 
whole  Unionist  Press,  which  was  three-quar- 
ters of  the  Press,  simply  supported  Clanri- 
carde,  and  charged  any  one  who  did  not  do 
so  with  supporting  the  Clan-na-Gael.  Mr. 
Balfour  was  simply  admired  for  enforcing 
the  system,  which  it  is  his  real  apologia  to 
have  tried  to  end,  or  at  least  to  have  allowed 
Wyndham  to  end.  I  am  not  yet  far  gone  in 
senile  decay;  but  already  I  have  lived  to  hear 
my  countrymen  talk  about  their  own  blind 
policy  in  the  time  of  the  Land  League,  ex- 
actly as  they  talked  before  of  their  blind 
policy  in  the  time  of  the  Limerick  Treaty. 


An  Example  and  a  Question         173 

The  shadow  on  our  past  shifts  forward  as 
we  advance  into  the  future ;  and  always  seems 
to  end  just  behind  us.  I  was  told  in  my  youth 
that  the  age-long  misgovernment  of  Ireland 
lasted  down  to  about  1870;  it  is  now  agreed 
among  all  intelligent  people  that  it  lasted  at 
least  down  to  about  1890.  A  little  common 
sense,  after  a  hint  like  the  Sheridan  Case,  will 
lead  one  to  suspect  the  simple  explanation 
that  it  is  going  on  still. 

Now  I  heard  scores  of  such  stories  as  the 
Sheridan  story  in  Ireland,  many  of  which  I 
mention  elsewhere;  but  I  do  not  mention 
them  here  because  they  cannot  be  publicly 
tested;  and  that  for  a  very  simple  reason. 
We  must  accept  all  the  advantages  and  dis- 
advantages of  a  rule  of  absolute  and  iron 
militarism.  We  cannot  impose  silence  and 
then  sift  stories;  we  cannot  forbid  argument 
and  then  ask  for  proof;  we  cannot  destroy 
rights  and  then  discover  wrongs.  I  say  this 
quite  Impartially  In  the  matter  of  militarism 
itself.  I  am  far  from  certain  that  soldiers  are 
worse  rulers  than  lawyers  and  merchants; 
and  I  am  quite  certain  that  a  nation  has  a 


174!  Irish  Impr^essions 

right  to  give  abnormal  power  to  its  soldiers 
in  time  of  war.  I  only  say  that  a  soldier,  if 
he  is  a  sensible  soldier,  will  know  what  he  is 
doing  and  therefore  what  he  cannot  do;  that 
he  cannot  gag  a  man  and  then  cross-examine 
him,  any  more  than  he  can  blow  out  his 
brains  and  then  convince  his  intelligence* 
There  may  be — humanly  speaking,  there  must 
be — a  mass  of  injustices  in  the  militaristic 
government  of  Ireland.  The  militarism  it- 
self may  be  the  least  of  them;  but  it  must  in- 
volve the  concealment  of  all  the  rest. 

It  has  been  remarked  above  that  establish- 
ing militarism  is  a  thing  which  a  nation  had 
a  right  to  do,  and  (what  is  not  at  all  the  same 
thing)  which  it  may  be  right  in  doing.  But 
with  that  very  phrase  "  a  nation,"  we  collide 
of  course  with  the  whole  real  question;  the 
alleged  abstract  wrong  about  which  the  Irish 
talk  much  more  than  about  their  concrete 
wrongs.  I  have  put  first  the  matters  men- 
tioned above,  because  I  wish  to  make  clear, 
as  a  matter  of  common  sense,  the  impression 
of  any  reasonable  outsider  that  they  certainly 
have  concrete  wrongs.     But  even  those  who 


An  Example  and  a  Question         175 

doubt  it,  and  say  that  the  Irish  have  no  con- 
crete grievance  but  only  a  sentiment  of  Na- 
tionalism, fall  into  a  final  and  very  serious 
error  about  the  nature  of  the  thing  called  Na- 
tionalism, and  even  the  meaning  of  the  word 
"  concrete."  For  the  truth  is  that,  in  dealing 
with  a  nation,  the  grievance  which  is  most 
abstract  of  all  is  also  the  one  which  is  most 
concrete  of  all. 

Not  only  is  patriotism  a  part  of  practical 
politics,  but  it  is  more  practical  than  any 
politics.  To  neglect  it,  and  ask  only  for 
grievances,,  is  like  counting  the  clouds  and  for- 
getting the  climate.  To  neglect  it,  and  think 
only  of  laws,  is  like  seeing  the  landmarks  and 
never  seeing  the  landscape. 

It  will  be  found  that  the  denial  of  nation- 
ality is  much  more  of  a  daily  nuisance  than 
the  denial  of  votes  or  the  denial  of  juries. 
Nationality  is  the  most  practical  thing,  be- 
cause so  many  things  are  national  without  be- 
ing political,  or  without  being  legal.  A  man 
in  a  conquered  country  feels  it  when  he  goes 
to  market  or  even  goes  to  church,  which  may 
be  more  often  than  he  goes  to  law;  and  the 


176  Irish  Impressions 

harvest  is  more  general  than  the  General 
Election.  Altering  the  flag  on  the  roof  is  like 
altering  the  sun  in  the  sky;  the  very  chimney- 
pots and  lamp-posts  look  different.  Nay, 
after  a  certain  interval  of  occupation,  they 
are  different.  As  a  man  v^ould  know  he  w^as 
in  a  land  of  strangers  before  he  knew  it  was 
a  land  of  savages,  so  he  knows  a  rule  is  alien 
long  before  he  knows  it  is  oppressive.  It  is 
not  necessary  for  it  to  add  injury  to  insult. 

For  instance,  when  I  first  walked  about 
Dublin,  I  was  disposed  to  smile  at  the  names 
of  the  streets  being  gravely  inscribed  in  Gaelic 
as  well  as  English.  I  will  not  here  discuss 
the  question  of  what  is  called  the  Irish 
language,  the  only  arguable  case  against 
which  is  that  it  is  not  the  Irish  language. 
But  at  any  rate  it  is  not  the  English  language, 
and  I  have  come  to  appreciate  more  imagi- 
natively the  importance  of  that  fact.  It  may 
be  used  rather  as  a  weapon  than  a  tool;  but 
it  is  a  national  weapon  if  it  is  not  a  national 
tool.  I  see  the  significance  of  having  some- 
thing which  the  eye  commonly  encounters, 
as  it  does  a  chimney-pot  or  a  lamp-post;  but 


An  Example  and  a  Question        177 

which  is  like  a  chimney  reared  above  an  Irish 
hearth  or  a  lamp  to  light  an  Irish  road.  I 
see  the  point  of  having  a  solid  object  in  the 
street  to  remind  an  Irishman  that  he  is  in  Ire- 
land, as  a  red  pillar-box  reminds  an  English- 
man that  he  is  in  England.  But  there  must 
be  a  thousand  things  as  practical  as  pillar- 
boxes  w^hich  remind  an  Irishman  that,  if  he 
is  in  his  country,  it  is  not  yet  a  free  country; 
everything  connected  v^ith  the  principal  seat 
of  government  reminds  him  of  it  perpetually. 
It  may  not  be  easy  for  an  Englishman  to 
imagine  how  many  of  such  daily  details  there 
are.  But  there  is,  after  all,  one  very  simple 
effort  of  the  fancy,  which  would  fix  the  fact 
for  him  for  ever.  He  has  only  to  imagine 
that  the  Germans  have  conquered  London. 

A  brilliant  writer  who  has  earned  the  name 
of  a  Pacifist,  and  even  a  Pro-German,  once 
propounded  to  me  his  highly  personal  and 
even  perverse  type  of  internationalism  by  say- 
ing, as  a  sort  of  unanswerable  challenge, 
"Wouldn't  you  rather  be  ruled  by  Goethe 
than  by  Walter  Long?"  I  replied  that 
words  could  not  express  the  wild  love  and 


178  IrisJi  Impressions 

loyalty  I  should  feel  for  Mr.  Walter  Long, 
if  the  only  alternative  were  Goethe.  I  could 
not  have  put  my  own  national  case  in  a 
clearer  or  more  compact  form.  I  might  oc- 
casionally feel  inclined  to  kill  Mr.  Long; 
but  under  the  approaching  shadow  of  Goethe, 
I  should  feel  more  inclined  to  kill  myself. 
That  is  the  deathly  element  in  denational- 
isation; that  it  poisons  life  itself,  the  most 
real  of  all  realities.  But  perhaps  the  best 
way  of  putting  the  point  conversationally  is 
to  say  that  Goethe  would  certainly  put  up  a 
monument  to  Shakespeare.  I  would  sooner 
die  than  walk  past  it  every  day  of  my  life. 
And  in  the  other  case  of  the  street  inscriptions, 
it  is  well  to  remember  that  these  things,  which 
we  also  walk  past  every  day,  are  exactly  the 
sort  of  things  that  always  have,  in  a  nameless 
fashion,  the  national  note.  If  the  Germans 
conquered  London,  they  would  not  need  to 
massacre  me  or  even  enslave  me,  in  order  to 
annoy  me ;  it  would  be  quite  enough  that  their 
notices  were  in  a  German  style,  if  not  in  a 
German  language.  Suppose  I  looked  up  in 
an  English  railway  carriage,  and  saw  these 


An  Example  and  a  Question         179 

words  written  in  English  exactly  as  I  have 
seen  them  in  a  German  railway  carriage 
written  in  German:  "The  outleaning  of  the 
body  from  the  window  of  the  carriage  is  be- 
cause of  the  therewith  bound  up  life's  danger 
strictly  prohibited."  It  is  not  rude.  It 
would  certainly  be  impossible  to  complain 
that  it  Is  curt.  I  should  not  be  annoyed  by 
its  brutality  and  brevity;  but  on  the  contrary 
by  its  elaborateness  and  even  its  laxity.  But 
if  it  does  not  exactly  shine  in  lucidity,  it 
gives  a  reason;  which  after  all  is  a  very 
reasonable  thing  to  do.  By  every  cosmo- 
politan test,  it  is  more  polite  than  the  sentence 
I  have  read  in  my  childhood:  "Wait  until 
the  train  stops."  This  is  curt;  this  might  be 
called  rude;  but  it  never  annoyed  me  in  the 
least.  The  nearest  I  can  get  to  defining  my 
sentiment  is  to  say  that  I  can  sympathise  with 
the  Englishman  who  wrote  the  English 
notice.  Havmg  a  rude  thing  to  write,  he 
WTote  it  as  quickly  as  he  could,  and  went 
home  to  his  tea;  or  preferably  to  his  beer. 
But  what  is  too  much  for  me,  an  overpower- 
ing vision,   is   the   thought  of   that  German 


180  Irish  Impressions 

calmly  sitting  down  to  compose  that  sentence 
like  a  sort  of  essay.  It  is  the  thought  of  him 
serenely  waving  away  the  one  important  word 
till  the  very  end  of  the  sentence,  like  the  Day 
of  Judgment  to  the  end  of  the  world.  It  is 
perhaps  the  mere  thought  that  he  did  not 
break  down  in  the  middle  of  it,  but  endured 
to  the  end ;  or  that  he  could  afterwards  calmly 
review  it,  and  see  that  sentence  go  marching 
by,  like  the  whole  German  army.  In  short, 
I  do  not  object  to  it  because  it  is  dictatorial  or 
despotic  or  bureaucratic  or  anything  of  the 
kind;  but  simply  because  it  is  German. 

Because  it  is  German  I  do  not  object  to  it 
in  Germany.  Because  it  is  German  I  should 
violently  revolt  against  it  in  England.  I  do 
not  revolt  against  the  command  to  wait  until 
the  train  stops,  not  because  it  is  less  rude,  but 
because  it  is  the  kind  of  rudeness  I  can  under- 
stand. The  official  may  be  treating  me 
casually,  but  at  least  he  is  not  treating  himself 
seriously.  And  so,  in  return,  I  can  treat  him 
and  his  notice  not  seriously  but  casually.  I 
can  neglect  to  wait  until  the  train  stops,  and 
fall  down  on  the  platform;  as  I  did  on  the 


An  Example  and  a  Question         181 

platform  of  Wolverhampton,  to  the  perma- 
nent damage  of  that  fine  structure.  I  can,  by 
a  stroke  of  satiric  genius,  truly  national  and 
traditional,  the  dexterous  elimination  of  a 
single  letter,  alter  the  maxim  to  "  Wait  until 
the  rain  stops."  It  is  a  jest  as  profoundly 
English  as  the  weather  to  which  it  refers. 
Nobody  would  be  tempted  to  take  such  a 
liberty  with  the  German  sentence;  not  only 
because  he  would  be  instantly  imprisoned  in 
a  fortress,  but  because  he  would  not  know  at 
which  end  to  begin. 

Now  this  is  the  truth  which  is  expressed, 
though  perhaps  very  imperfectly,  in  things 
like  the  Gaelic  lettering  on  streets  in  Dublin. 
It  will  be  wholesome  for  us  who  are  English 
to  realise  that  there  is  almost  certainly  an 
English  way  of  putting  things,  even  the  most 
harmless  things,  which  appears  to  an  Irish- 
man quite  as  ungainly,  unnatural,  and 
ludicrous  as  that  German  sentence  appears 
to  me.  As  the  famous  Frenchman  did  not 
know  when  he  was  talking  prose,  the  official 
Englishman  does  not  know  when  he  is  talk- 
ing English.     He  unconsciously  assumes  that 


182  Irish  Impressions 

he  is  talking  Esperanto.  Imperialism  is  not 
an  insanity  of  patriotism;  it  is  merely  an  il- 
lusion of  cosmopolitanism. 

For  the  national  note  of  the  Irish  language 
is  not  peculiar  to  what  used  to  be  called  the 
Erse  language.  The  whole  nation  used  the 
tongue  common  to  both  nations  with  a  dififer- 
ence  far  beyond  a  dialect.  It  is  not  a  differ- 
ence of  accent,  but  a  difference  of  style; 
which  is  generally  a  difference  of  soul.  The 
emphasis,  the  elision,  the  short  cuts  and 
sharp  endings  of  speech,  show  a  variety 
which  may  be  almost  unnoticeable  but  is 
none  the  less  untranslatable.  It  may  be  only 
a  little  more  weight  on  a  word,  or  an  inver- 
sion allowable  in  English  but  abounding  in 
Irish;  but  we  can  no  more  copy  it  than  copy 
the  compactness  of  the  French  on  or  the 
Latin  ablative  absolute.  The  commonest  case 
of  what  I  mean,  for  instance,  is  the  locution 
that  lingers  in  my  mind  with  an  agreeable 
phrase  from  one  of  Mr.  Yeats's  stories: 
"  Whom  I  shall  yet  see  upon  the  hob  of  hell, 
and  them  screeching."  It  is  an  idiom  that 
gives  the  effect  of  a  pointed  postscript,  a  part- 


An  Example  and  a  Question         183 

ing  kick  or  sting  in  the  tail  of  the  sentence, 
which  is  unfathomably  national.  It  is  note- 
worthy and  even  curious  that  quite  a  crowd 
of  Irishmen,  who  quoted  to  me  with  just  ad- 
miration the  noble  ending  of  Kathleen-na- 
Hulahan,  where  the  newcomer  is  asked  if 
he  has  seen  the  old  woman  who  is  the  tragic 
type  of  Ireland  going  out,  quoted  his  answer 
in  that  form,  "  I  did  not.  But  I  saw  a  young 
woman;  and  she  walking  like  a  queen."  I 
say  it  is  curious;  because  I  have  since  been 
told  that  in  the  actual  book  (which  I  cannot 
lay  my  hand  on  at  the  moment)  a  more  classic 
English  idiom  is  used.  It  would  generally 
be  most  unwise  to  alter  the  diction  of  such  a 
master  of  style  as  Mr.  Yeats:  though  indeed 
it  is  possible  that  he  altered  it  himself,  as  he 
has  sometimes  done,  and  not  always,  I  think, 
for  the  better.  But  whether  this  form  came 
from  himself  or  from  his  countrymen,  it  was 
very  redolent  of  his  country.  And  there 
was  something  inspiring  in  thus  seeing,  as  it 
were  before  one's  eyes,  literature  becoming 
legend.  But  a  hundred  other  examples  could 
be  given,  even  from  my  own  short  experi- 


184  Irish  Impressions 

ence,  of  such  fine  turns  of  language,  nor  are 
the  finest  necessarily  to  be  found  in  literature. 
It  is  perfectly  true,  though  prigs  may  over- 
work and  snobs  underrate  the  truth,  that  in 
a  country  like  this  the  peasants  can  talk  like 
poets.  When  I  was  on  the  wild  coast  of 
Donegal,  an  old  unhappy  woman  who  had 
starved  through  the  famines  and  the  evic- 
tions, was  telling  a  lady  the  tales  of  those 
times;  and  she  mentioned  quite  naturally  one 
that  might  have  come  straight  out  of  times 
so  mystical  that  we  should  call  them  mythi- 
cal; that  some  travellers  had  met  a  poor 
wandering  woman  with  a  baby  in  those  great 
gray  rocky  wastes,  and  asked  her  who  she 
was.  And  she  answered,  ''  I  am  the  Mother 
of  God,  and  this  is  Himself;  and  He  is  the 
boy  you  will  all  be  wanting  at  the  last." 

There  is  more  in  that  story  than  can  be 
put  into  any  book,  even  on  a  matter  in  which 
its  meaning  plays  so  deep  a  part;  and  it 
seems  almost  profane  to  analyse  it  however 
sympathetically.  But  if  any  one  wishes  to 
know  what  I  mean  by  the  untranslatable 
truth  which  makes  a  language  national,   it 


An  Example  and  a  Question         185 

will  be  worth  while  to  look  at  the  mere  dic- 
tion of  that  speech,  and  note  how  its  whole 
effect  turns  on  certain  phrases  and  customs 
which  happen  to  be  peculiar  to  the  nation. 
It  is  well  known  that  in  Ireland  the  hus- 
band or  head  of  the  house  is  always  called 
"himself";  nor  is  it  peculiar  to  the  peas- 
antry, but  adopted,  if  partly  in  jest,  by  the 
gentry.  A  distinguished  Dublin  publicist,  a 
landlord  and  leader  among  the  more  na- 
tional aristocracy,  always  called  me  "  him- 
self "  when  he  was  talking  to  my  wife.  It 
will  be  noted  how  a  sort  of  shadow  of  that 
common  meaning  mingles  with  the  more 
shining  significance  of  its  position  in  a 
sentence  where  it  is  also  strictly  logical,  in 
the  sense  of  theological.  All  literary  style, 
especially  national  style,  is  made  up  of  such 
coincidences;  which  are  a  spiritual  sort  of 
puns.  That  is  why  st3de  is  untranslatable; 
because  it  is  possible  to  render  the  meaning, 
but  not  the  double  meaning.  There  is  even 
a  faint  differentiation  in  the  half-humorous 
possibilities  of  the  word  "boy";  another 
wholly  national  nuance.     Say  instead,  "  And 


186  Irish  Impressions 

He  is  the  child  "  and  it  is  something  perhaps 
stiffer,  and  certainly  quite  different.  Take 
away,  "  This  is  Himself  "  and  simply  substi- 
tute "This  is  He  ";  and  it  is  a  piece  of  ped- 
antry ten  thousand  miles  from  the  original. 
But  above  all  it  has  lost  its  note  of  something 
national,  because  it  has  lost  its  note  of  some- 
thing domestic.  All  roads  in  Ireland,  of  fact 
or  folk-lore,  of  theology  or  grammar,  lead  us 
back  to  that  door  and  hearth  of  the  house- 
hold, that  fortress  of  the  family  which  is  the 
key-fortress  of  the  whole  strategy  of  the 
island.  The  Irish  Catholics,  like  other 
Christians,  admit  a  mystery  in  the  Holy 
Trinity,  but  they  may  almost  be  said  to  ad- 
mit an  experience  in  the  Holy  Family. 
Their  historical  experience,  alas,  has  made  it 
seem  to  them  not  unnatural  that  the  Holy 
Family  should  be  a  homeless  family.  They 
also  have  found  that  there  was  no  room  for 
them  at  the  inn,  or  anywhere  but  in  the  jail; 
they  also  have  dragged  their  new-born  babes 
out  of  their  cradles,  and  trailed  in  despair 
along  the  road  to  Egypt,  or  at  least  along 
the  road  to  exile.     They  also  have  heard  in 


An  Example  and  a  Question         187 

the  dark  and  the  distance  behind  them,  the 
noise  of  the  horsemen  of  Herod. 

Now  it  is  this  sensation  of  stemming  a 
stream,  of  ten  thousand  things  all  pouring 
one  way,  labels,  titles,  m^onuments,  metaphors, 
modes  of  address,  assumptions  in  controversy, 
that  make  an  Englishman  in  Ireland  know 
that  he  is  in  a  strange  land.  Nor  is  he  merely 
bewildered,  as  among  a  medley  of  strange 
things.  On  the  contrary,  if  he  has  any  sense, 
he  soon  finds  them  unified  and  simplified  to 
a  single  impression ;  as  if  he  were  talking  to 
a  strange  person.  He  cannot  define  it  be- 
cause nobody  can  define  a  person;  and  no- 
body can  define  a  nation.  He  can  only  see 
it,  smell  it,  hear  it,  handle  it,  bump  into  it, 
fall  over  it,  kill  it,  be  killed  for  it,  or  be 
damned  for  doing  it  wrong.  He  must  be 
content  with  these  mere  hints  of  its  existence; 
but  he  cannot  define  it,  because  it  is  like  a 
person;  and  no  book  of  logic  will  undertake 
to  define  Aunt  Jane  or  Uncle  William.  We 
can  only  say,  with  more  or  less  mournful  con- 
viction, that  if  Aunt  Jane  is  not  a  person, 
there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  person,  and  I  say 


188  Irish  Impressions 

with  equal  conviction  that  if  Ireland  is  not 
a  nation,  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  nation. 
France  is  not  a  nation,  England  is  not  a  na- 
tion; there  is  no  such  thing  as  patriotism  on 
this  planet.  Any  Englishman,  of  any  party, 
with  any  proposal,  may  well  clear  his  mind 
of  cant  about  that  preliminary  question.  If 
we  free  Ireland,  we  must  free  it  to  be  a  na- 
tion; if  we  go  on  repressing  Ireland,  we  are 
repressing  a  nation;  if  we  are  right  to  repress 
Ireland,  we  are  right  to  repress  a  nation. 
After  that  we  may  consider  what  can  be  done, 
according  to  our  opinions  about  the  respect 
due  to  patriotism,  the  reality  of  cosmopolitan 
and  imperial  alternatives,  and  so  on.  I  will 
debate  with  the  man  who  does  not  want  man- 
kind divided  into  nations  at  all;  I  can 
imagine  a  case  for  the  man  who  wants 
specially  to  restrain  one  particular  nation,  as 
I  would  restrain  anti-national  Prussia.  But 
I  will  not  argue  with  a  man  about  whether 
Ireland  is  a  nation,  or  about  the  yet  more 
awful  question  of  whether  it  is  an  island.  I 
know  there  is  a  sceptical  philosophy  which 
suggests    that    all    ultimate    ideas    are    only 


An  Example  and  a  Question        189 

penultimate  ideas;  and  therefore  perhaps  that 
all  islands  are  really  peninsulars.  But  I  will 
claim  to  know  what  I  mean  by  an  island  and 
what  I  mean  by  an  individual;  and  when  I 
think  suddenly  of  my  experience  in  the 
island  in  question,  the  impression  is  a  single 
one;  the  voices  mingle  in  a  human  voice 
which  i  should  know  if  I  heard  it  again, 
calling  in  the  distance;  the  crowds  dwindle 
into  a  single  figure  whom  I  have  seen  long 
ago  upon  a  strange  hill-side,  and  she  walking 
like  a  queen. 


IX — Belfast  and  the  Religious  Problem 

OF  that  cloud  of  dream  which  seems 
to  drift  over  so  many  Irish  poems 
and  impressions,  I  felt  very  little  in 
Ireland.  There  is  a  real  meaning 
in  this  suggestion  of  a  mystic  sleep;  but  it 
does  not  mean  what  most  of  us  imagine,  and 
is  not  to  be  found  where  we  expect  it.  On 
the  contrary,  I  think  the  most  vivid  impres- 
sion the  nation  left  on  me,  was  that  it  was 
almost  unnaturally  wide  awake.  I  might  al- 
most say  that  Ireland  suffers  from  insomnia. 
This  is  not  only  literally  true,  of  those  tre- 
mendous talks,  the  prolonged  activities  of  rich 
and  restless  intellects,  that  can  burn  up  the 
nights  from  darkness  to  daybreak.  It  is  true 
on  the  doubtful  as  well  as  the  delightful  side; 
and  the  temperament  has  something  of  the 
morbid  vigilance  and  even  of  the  irritability 
of  insomnia.     Its  lucidity  is  not  only  super- 

190 


Belfast  and  the  Bcligious  Problem      191 

human,  but  it  is  sometimes  in  the  true  sense 
inhuman.  Its  intellectual  clarity  cannot  re- 
sist the  temptation  to  intellectual  cruelty.  If 
I  had  to  sum  up  in  a  sentence  the  one  fault 
really  to  be  found  with  the  Irish,  I  could  do 
it  simply  enough.  I  should  say  it  saddened 
me  that  I  liked  them  all  so  much  better  than 
they  liked  each  other.  But  it  is  our  supreme 
stupidity  that  this  is  always  taken  as  mean- 
ing that  Ireland  is  a  sort  of  Donnybrook  Fair. 
It  is  really  quite  the  reverse  of  a  merely 
rowdy  and  irresponsible  quarrel.  So  far  from 
fighting  with  shillelaghs,  they  fight  far  too 
much  with  rapiers;  their  temptation  is  in  the 
very  nicety  and  even  delicacy  of  the  thrust. 
Of  course  there  are  multitudes  who  make  no 
such  deadly  use  of  the  national  irony;  but  it 
is  sufficiently  common  for  even  these  to  suf- 
fer from  it;  and  after  a  time  I  began  to  un- 
derstand a  little  that  burden  about  bitterness 
of  speech,  which  recurs  so  often  in  the  songs 
of  Mr.  Yeats  and  other  Irish  poets. 

"  Though  hope  fall  from  you  and  love  decay 
Burning  in  fires  of  a  slanderous  tongue." 


192  Irish  Impressions 

But  there  is  nothing  dreamy  about  the  bit- 
terness; the  worst  part  of  it  is  the  fact  that 
the  criticisms  always  have  a  very  lucid  and 
logical  touch  of  truth.  It  is  not  for  us  to  lec- 
ture the  Irish  about  forgiveness,  who  have 
given  them  so  much  to  forgive.  But  if  some 
one  who  had  not  lost  the  right  to  preach  to 
them,  if  St.  Patrick  were  to  return  to  preach, 
he  would  find  that  nothing  had  failed, 
through  all  those  ages  of  agony,  of  faith  and 
honour  and  endurance;  but  I  think  he  might 
possibly  say,  what  I  have  no  right  to  say,  a 
word  about  charity. 

There  is  indeed  one  decisive  sense  in  which 
the  Irish  are  very  poetical;  in  that  of  giving 
a  special  and  serious  social  recognition  to 
poetry.  I  have  sometimes  expressed  the  fancy 
that  men  in  the  Golden  Age  might  spontane- 
ously talk  in  verse;  and  it  is  really  true  that 
half  the  Irish  talk  is  in  verse.  Quotation 
becomes  recitation.  But  it  is  much  too 
rhythmic  to  resemble  our  own  theatrical  rec- 
itations. This  is  one  of  my  own  strongest  and 
most  sympathetic  memories,  and  one  of  my 
most  definable  reasons  for  having  felt  extraor- 


Belfast  and  the  Religious  Problem      193 


dinarily  happy  in  Dublin.  It  was  a  paradise 
of  poets,  in  which  a  man  who  may  feel  in- 
clined to  mention  a  book  or  two  of  Paradise 
Lost,  or  illustrate  his  meaning  with  the  com- 
plete ballad  of  the  Ancient  Mariner,  feels  he 
will  be  better  understood  than  elsewhere. 
But  the  more  this  very  national  quality  is 
noted,  the  less  it  will  be  mistaken  for  anything 
merely  irresponsible,  or  even  merely  emo- 
tional. The  shortest  way  of  stating  the  truth 
is  to  say  that  poetry  plays  the  part  of  music. 
It  is  in  every  sense  of  the  phrase  a  social  func- 
tion. A  poetical  evening  is  as  natural  as  a 
musical  evening;  and  being  as  natural  it  be- 
comes what  is  called  artificial.  As  in  some 
circles  "  Do  you  play?  "  is  rather  "  Don't  you 
play?  "  these  Irish  circles  would  be  surprised 
because  a  man  did  not  recite  rather  than  be- 
cause he  did.  A  hostile  critic,  especially  an 
Irish  critic,  might  possibly  say  that  the  Irish 
are  poetical  because  they  are  not  sufficiently 
musical.  I  can  imagine  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw 
saying  something  of  the  sort.  But  it  might 
well  be  retorted  that  they  are  not  merely 
musical  because  they  will  not  consent  to  be 


194  Irish  Impressions 

merely  emotional.  It  is  far  truer  to  say  that 
they  give  a  reasonable  place  to  poetry,  than 
that  they  permit  any  particular  poetic  inter- 
ference with  reason.  "  But  I,  whose  virtues 
are  the  definitions  of  the  analytical  mind,'^ 
says  Mr.  Yeats,  and  any  one  who  has  been  in 
the  atmosphere  will  know  what  he  means. 
In  so  far  as  such  things  stray  from  reason, 
they  tend  rather  to  ritual  than  to  riot.  Poetry 
is  in  Ireland  what  humour  is  in  America;  it 
is  an  institution.  The  Englishman,  who  is 
always  for  good  and  evil  the  amateur,  takes 
both  in  a  more  occasional  and  even  accidental 
fashion.  It  must  always  be  remembered  here 
that  the  ancient  Irish  civilisation  had  a  high 
order  of  poetry,  which  was  not  merely 
mystical,  but  rather  mathematical.  Like 
Celtic  ornament,  Celtic  verse  tended  too  much 
to  geometrical  patterns.  If  this  was  irra- 
tional, it  was  not  by  excess  of  emotion.  It 
might  rather  be  described  as  irrational  by 
excess  of  reason.  The  antique  hierarchy  of 
minstrels,  each  grade  with  its  own  compli- 
cated metre,  suggests  that  there  was  something 
Chinese  about  a  thing  so  unhumanly  civilised. 


Belfast  and  the  Religious  Problem      195 

Yet  all  this  vanished  etiquette  is  somehow  in 
the  air  in  Ireland;  and  men  and  women  move 
to  it,  as  to  the  steps  of  a  lost  dance. 

Thus,  whether  we  consider  the  sense  In 
which  the  Irish  are  really  quarrelsome,  or  the 
sense  in  which  they  are  really  poetical,  we 
find  that  both  lead  us  back  to  a  condition  of 
clarity  which  seems  the  very  reverse  of  a  mere 
dream.  In  both  cases  Ireland  is  critical,  and 
even  self-critical.  The  bitterness  I  have  ven- 
tured to  lament  is  not  Irish  bitterness  against 
the  English ;  that  I  should  assume  as  not  only 
inevitable,  but  substantially  justifiable.  It  is 
Irish  bitterness  against  the  Irish;  the  remarks 
of  one  honest  Nationalist  about  another  hon- 
est Nationalist.  Similarly,  while  they  are 
fond  of  poetry,  they  are  not  always  fond  of 
poets;  and  there  is  plenty  of  satire  in  their 
conversation  on  the  subject.  I  have  said  that 
half  the  talk  may  consist  of  poetry;  I  might 
almost  say  that  the  other  half  may  consist  of 
parody.  All  these  things  amount  to  an  ex- 
cess of  vigilance  and  realism;  the  mass  of  the 
people  watch  and  pray,  but  even  those  who 
never  pray  never  cease  to  watch.     If   they 


196  Irish  Impressions 

idealise  sleep,  it  is  as  the  sleepless  do;  it  might 
almost  be  said  that  they  can  only  dream  of 
dreaming.  If  a  dream  haunts  them,  it  is 
rather  as  something  that  escapes  them;  and 
indeed  some  of  their  finest  poetry  is  rather 
about  seeking  fairyland  than  about  finding  it. 
Granted  all  this,  I  may  say  that  there  was  one 
place  in  Ireland  where  I  did  seem  to  find  it, 
and  not  merely  to  seek  it.  There  was  one 
spot  where  I  seemed  to  see  the  dream  itself 
in  possession;  as  one  might  see  from  afar  a 
cloud  resting  on  a  single  hill.  There  a  dream, 
at  once  a  desire  and  a  delusion,  brooded  above 
a  whole  city.    That  place  was  Belfast. 

The  description  could  be  justified  even  lit- 
erally and  in  detail.  A  man  told  me  in  north- 
east Ulster  that  he  had  heard  a  mother  warn- 
ing her  children  away  from  some  pond,  or 
similar  place  of  danger,  by  saying,  "  Don't 
you  go  there ;  there  are  wee  popes  there."  A 
country  where  that  could  be  said  is  like  Elf- 
land  as  compared  to  England.  If  not  exactly 
a  land  of  fairies,  it  is  at  least  a  land  of  gob- 
lins. There  is  something  charming  in  the 
fancy  of  a  pool  full  of  these  peculiar  elves. 


Belfast  a7id  the  Religious  Problem      197 

like  so  many  efts,  each  with  his  tiny  triple 
crown  or  crossed  keys  complete.  That  is  the 
difference  between  this  manufacturing  dis- 
trict and  an  English  manufacturing  district, 
like  that  of  Manchester.  There  are  numbers 
of  sturdy  Nonconformists  in  Manchester;  and 
doubtless  they  direct  some  of  their  educa- 
tional warnings  against  the  system  represented 
by  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury.  But  no- 
body in  Manchester,  however  Nonconform- 
ist, tells  even  a  child  that  a  puddle  is  a  sort 
of  breeding  place  for  Archbishops  of  Canter- 
bury, little  goblins  in  gaiters  and  aprons.  It 
may  be  said  that  it  is  a  very  stagnant  pool  that 
breeds  that  sort  of  efts.  But  whatever  view 
we  take  of  it,  it  remains  true,  to  begin  with, 
that  the  paradox  could  be  proved  merely  from 
superficial  things  like  superstitions.  Protes- 
tant Ulster  reeks  of  superstition;  it  is  the 
strong  smell  that  really  comes  like  a  blast  out 
of  Belfast,  as  distinct  from  Birmingham  or 
Brixton.  But  to  me  there  is  always  some- 
thing human  and  almost  humanising  about 
superstition;  and  I  really  think  that  such  lin- 
gering legends  about  the  Pope,  as  a  being  as 


198  Irish  Impressions 

distant  and  dehumanised  as  the  King  of  the 
Cannibal  Islands,  have  served  as  a  sort  of  neg- 
ative folk-lore.  And  the  same  may  be  said, 
in  so  far  as  it  is  true  that  the  commercial  prov- 
ince has  retained  a  theology  as  well  as  a 
mythology.  Wherever  men  are  still  theolog- 
ical there  is  still  some  chance  of  their  being 
logical.  And  in  this  the  Calvinist  Ulsterman 
may  be  more  of  a  Catholic  Irishman  than  is 
commonly  realised,  especially  by  himself. 

Attacks  and  apologies  abound  about  the 
matter  of  Belfast  bigotry;  but  bigotry  is  by  no 
means  the  worst  thing  in  Belfast.  I  rather 
think  it  is  the  best.  Nor  is  it  the  strongest 
example  of  what  I  mean,  when  I  say  that  Bel- 
fast does  really  live  in  a  dream.  The  other 
and  more  remarkable  fault  of  the  society  has 
indeed  a  religious  root;  for  nearly  everything 
in  history  has  a  religious  root,  and  especially 
nearly  everything  in  Irish  history.  Of  that 
theoretical  origin  in  theology  I  may  say  some- 
thing in  a  moment;  it  will  be  enough  to  say 
here  that  what  has  produced  the  more  prom- 
inent and  practical  evil  is  ultimately  the  the- 
ology itself,  but  not  the  habit  of  being  theo- 


Belfast  and  the  Religious  Problem      199 

logical.  It  Is  the  creed;  but  not  the  faith. 
In  so  far  as  the  Ulster  Protestant  really  has 
a  faith,  he  is  really  a  fine  fellow;  though  per- 
haps not  quite  so  fine  a  fellow  as  he  thinks 
himself.  And  that  is  the  chasm;  and  can  be 
most  shortly  stated  as  I  have  often  stated  it 
in  such  debates,  by  saying  that  the  Protestant 
generally  says,  "  I  am  a  good  Protestant," 
while  the  Catholic  always  says,  "  I  am  a  bad 
Catholic." 

When  I  say  that  Belfast  is  dominated  by 
a  dream,  I  mean  it  in  the  strict  psychological 
sense;  that  something  inside  the  mind  is 
stronger  than  everything  outside  it.  Non- 
sense is  not  only  stronger  than  sense,  but 
stronger  than  the  senses.  The  idea  in  a  man's 
head  can  eclipse  the  eyes  in  his  head.  Very 
worthy  and  kindly  merchants  told  me  there 
was  no  poverty  in  Belfast.  They  did  not  say 
there  was  less  poverty  than  was  commonly  al- 
leged, or  less  poverty  than  there  had  been,  or 
less  than  there  was  in  similar  places  else- 
where. They  said  there  was  none.  As  a  re- 
mark about  the  Earthly  Paradise  or  the  New 
Jerusalem,  it  would  be  arresting.    As  a  re- 


200  Irish  Impressions 

mark  about  the  streets,  through  which  they 
and  I  had  both  passed  a  few  moments  before, 
it  was  simply  a  triumph  of  the  sheer  madness 
of  the  imagination  of  man.  These  eminent 
citizens  of  Belfast  received  me  in  the  kindest 
and  most  courteous  fashion ;  and  I  would  not 
willingly  say  anything  in  criticism  of  them 
beyond  what  is  necessary  for  the  practical 
needs  of  their  country  and  mine.  But  indeed 
I  think  the  greatest  criticism  of  them  is  that 
they  would  not  understand  what  the  criticism 
means.  I  will  therefore  clothe  it  in  a  para- 
ble, which  is  none  the  worse  for  having  also 
been  a  real  incident.  When  told  there  was 
no  poverty  in  Belfast,  I  had  remarked  mildly 
that  the  people  must  have  a  singular  taste  in 
dress.  I  w^as  gravely  assured  that  they  had 
indeed  a  most  singular  taste  in  dress.  I  was 
left  with  the  general  impression  that  wearing 
shirts  or  trousers  decorated  with  large  holes 
at  irregular  intervals  was  a  pardonable  form 
of  foppery  or  fashionable  extravagance. 
And  it  will  always  be  a  deep  indwelling  de- 
light, in  the  memories  of  my  life,  that  just 
as  these  city  fathers  and  I  came  out  on  to  the 


Belfast  and  the  Religious  Problem      201 

steps  of  the  hotel,  there  appeared  before  us 
one  of  the  raggedest  of  the  ra^ed  little  boys 
I  had  seen,  asking  for  a  penny.  I  gave  him 
a  penny,  whereon  this  group  of  merchants  was 
suddenly  transfigured  into  a  sort  of  mob, 
vociferating,  "  Against  the  law  I  Against  the 
law  I"  and  bundled  him  away.  I  hope  it  is 
not  unamiable  to  be  so  much  entertained  by 
that  vision  of  a  mob  of  magistrates,  so 
earnestly  shooing  away  a  solitary  child  like  a 
cat.  Anyhow,  they  knew  not  what  they  did ; 
and, -what  is  worse,  knew  not  that  they  knew 
not.  And  they  would  not  understand,  if  I 
told  them,  what  legend  might  have  been  made 
about  that  child,  in  the  Christian  ages  of  the 
world. 

The  point  is  here  that  the  evil  in  the  de- 
lusion does  not  consist  in  bigotry,  but  in 
vanity.  It  Is  not  that  such  a  Belfast  man 
thinks  he  is  right;  for  any  honest  man  has  a 
right  to  think  he  is  right.  It  is  that  he  does 
think  he  is  good,  not  to  say  great;  and  no 
honest  man  can  reach  that  comfortable  con- 
viction without  a  course  of  intellectual  dis- 
honesty.   What    cuts    this    spirit    off    from 


202  Irish  Impressions 

Christian  common  sense  is  the  fact  that  the 
delusion,  like  most  insane  delusions,  is  merely 
egotistical.  It  is  simply  the  pleasure  of 
thinking  extravagantly  well  of  oneself;  and 
unlimited  indulgence  in  that  pleasure  is  far 
more  weakening  than  any  indulgence  in  drink 
or  dissipation.  But  so  completely  does  it 
construct  an  unreal  cosmos  round  the  ego,  that 
the  criticism  of  the  world  cannot  be  felt  even 
for  worldly  purposes.  I  could  give  many 
examples  of  this  element  in  Belfast,  as  com- 
pared even  with  Birmingham  or  Manchester. 
The  Lord  Mayor  of  Manchester  may  not 
happen  to  know  much  about  pictures;  but  he 
knows  men  who  know  about  them.  But  the 
Belfast  authorities  will  exhibit  a  maniacally 
bad  picture  as  a  masterpiece,  merely  because 
it  glorifies  Belfast.  No  man  dare  put  up  such 
a  picture  in  Manchester,  within  a  stone's- 
throw  of  Mr.  Charles  Rowley.  I  care  com- 
paratively little  about  the  case  of  aesthetics; 
but  the  case  is  even  clearer  in  ethics.  So 
wholly  are  these  people  sundered  from  more 
Christian  traditions  that  their  very  boasts 
lower  them;  and  they  abase  themselves  when 


Belfast  and  the  Religious  Problem      203 

they  mean  to  exalt  themselves.  It  never 
occurs  to  them  that  their  strange  inside  stan- 
dards do  not  always  impress  outsiders.  A 
great  employer  introduced  me  to  several  of 
his  very  intelligent  employees;  and  I  can 
readily  bear  witness  to  the  sincerity  of  the 
great  Belfast  delusion  even  among  many  of 
the  poorer  men  of  Belfast.  But  the  sincere 
efforts  of  them  and  their  master,  to  convince 
me  that  a  union  with  the  Catholic  majority 
under  Home  Rule  was  intolerable  to  them, 
all  went  to  one  tune,  which  .recurred  with  a 
kind  of  chorus,  "  We  won't  have  the  likes  of 
them  making  laws  for  the  likes  of  us."  It 
never  seemed  to  cross  their  minds  that  this 
is  not  a  high  example  of  any  human  morality; 
that  judged  by  pagan  verecundia  or  Christian 
humility  or  modern  democratic  brotherhood, 
it  is  simply  the  remark  of  a  snob.  The  man 
in  question  is  quite  innocent  of  all  this;  he 
has  no  notion  of  modesty,  or  even  of  mock 
modesty;  he  is  not  only  superior,  but  he  thinks 
it  a  superiority  to  claim  superiority. 

It  is  here  that  we  cannot  avoid  theology, 
because  we   cannot   avoid   theory.     For   the 


204  Irish  Impressions 

point  is  that  even  in  theory  the  one  religious 
atmosphere  now  differs  from  the  other.  That 
the  difference  had  historically  a  religious 
root  is  really  unquestionable;  but  anyhow  it 
is  very  deeply  rooted.  The  essence  of  Cal- 
vinism was  certainty  about  salvation;  the  es- 
sence of  Catholicism  is  uncertanity  about  sal- 
vation. The  modern  and  materialised  form 
of  that  certainty  is  superiority;  the  belief  of 
a  man  in  a  fixed  moral  aristocracy  of  men 
like  himself.  But  the  truth  concerned  here 
is  that,  by  this  time  at  any  rate,  the  superiority 
has  become  a  doctrine  as  well  as  an  indul- 
gence. I  doubt  if  this  extreme  school  of 
Protestants  believe  in  Christian  humility 
even  as  an  ideal.  I  doubt  whether  the  more 
honest  of  them  would  even  profess  to  believe 
in  it.  This  can  be  clearly  seen  by  comparing 
it  with  other  Christian  virtues;  of  which  this 
decayed  Calvinism  offers  at  least  a  version, 
even  to  those  who  think  it  a  perversion. 
Puritanism  is  a  version  of  purity;  if  we  think 
it  a  parody  of  purity.  Philanthropy  is  a  ver- 
sion of  charity;  if  we  think  it  a  parody  of 
charity.     But  in  all  this  commercial  Protes- 


Belfast  and  the  Eeligious  Problem      205 

tantism  there  is  no  version  of  humility;  there 
is  not  even  a  parody  of  humility.  Humility 
is  not  an  ideal.  Humility  is  not  even  a  hypoc- 
ris}''.  There  is  no  institution,  no  command- 
ment, no  common  form  of  words,  no  popu- 
lar pattern  or  traditional  tale,  to  tell  any- 
body in  any  fashion  that  there  is  any  such 
thing  as  a  peril  of  spiritual  pride.  In  short, 
there  is  here  a  school  of  thought  and  senti- 
ment that  does  definitely  regard  self-satisfac- 
tion as  a  strength;  as  against  the  strong  Chris- 
tian tradition  in  the  rest  of  the  country  that 
does  as  definitely  regard  it  as  a  weakness. 
That  is  the  real  moral  issue  in  the  modern 
struggle  in  Ireland;  nor  is  it  confined  to 
Ireland.  England  has  been  deeply  infected 
with  this  Pharisaical  weakness;  but  as  I  have 
said,  England  takes  things  vaguely  where 
Ireland  takes  them  vividly.  The  men  of 
Belfast  ofifer  that  city  as  something  supreme, 
unique  and  unrivalled;  and  they  are  very 
nearly  right.  There  is  nothing  exactly  like 
it  in  the  industrialism  of  this  country;  but  for 
all  that,  the  fight  against  its  religion  of  arro- 
gance has  been  fought  out  elsewhere  and  on 


206  Irish  Impressions 

2i  larger  field.  There  is  another  centre  and 
citadel  from  which  this  theory,  of  strength  in 
a  self-hypnotised  superiority,  has  despised 
Christendom.  There  has  been  a  rival  city  to 
Belfast;  and  its  name  was  Berlin. 

Historians  of  all  religions  and  no  religion 
may  yet  come  to  regard  it  as  a  historical  fact, 
I  fancy,  that  the  Protestant  Reformation  of 
the  sixteenth  century  (at  least  in  the  form  it 
actually  took)  was  a  barbaric  breakdown, 
like  that  Prussianism  which  was  the  ultimate 
product  of  the  Protestantism.  But  however 
this  may  be,  historians  will  always  be  inter- 
ested to  note  that  it  produced  certain  curious 
and  characteristic  things;  which  are  worth 
studying  whether  we  like  or  dislike  them. 
And  one  of  its  features,  I  fancy,  has  been 
this;  that  it  has  had  the  power  of  producing 
certain  institutions  which  progressed  very 
rapidly  to  great  wealth  and  power;  which  the 
world  regarded  at  a  certain  moment  as  in- 
vincible; and  which  the  world,  at  the  next 
moment,  suddenly  discovered  to  be  intoler- 
able. It  was  so  with  the  whole  of  that  Cal- 
vinist  theology,  of  which  Belfast  is  now  left 


Belfast  and  the  Religious  Problem      207 

as  the  lonely  missionary.  It  was  so,  even  in 
our  own  time,  with  the  whole  of  that  indus- 
trial capitalism  of  which  Belfast  is  now  the 
besieged  and  almost  deserted  outpost.  And 
it  was  so  with  Berlin  as  it  was  with  Belfast; 
and  a  subtle  Prussian  might  almost  complain 
of  a  kind  of  treachery,  in  the  abruptness  with 
which  the  world  woke  up  and  found  it  want- 
ing; in  the  suddenness  of  the  reaction  that 
struck  it  impotent,  so  soon  after  it  had  been 
counted  on  omnipotent.  These  things  seem 
to  hold  all  the  future;  and  in  one  flash  they 
are  things  of  the  past. 

Belfast  is  an  antiquated  novelty.  Such  a 
thing  is  still  being  excused  for  seeming  par- 
venu when  it  is  discovered  to  be  passe.  For 
instance,  it  is  only  by  coming  in  touch  wath 
some  of  the  controversies  surrounding  the 
Convention,  that  an  Englishman  could  realise 
how  much  the  mentality  of  the  Belfast  leader 
is  not  so  much  that  of  a  remote  seventeenth 
century  Whig,  as  that  of  a  recent  nine- 
teenth century  Radical.  His  conventionality 
seemed  to  be  that  of  a  Victorian  rather  than 
a  Williamite;  and  to  be  less  limited  by  the 


208  Irish  Impressions 

Orange  Brotherhood  than  by  the  Cobden 
Club.  This  is  a  fact  most  successfully 
painted  and  pasted  over  by  the  big  brushes 
of  our  own  Party  System,  which  has  the  art 
of  hiding  so  many  glaring  facts.  This 
Unionist  Party  in  Ireland  is  very  largely  con- 
cerned to  resist  the  main  reform  advocated 
by  the  Unionist  Party  in  England.  A  politi- 
cal humorist,  who  understood  the  Cobden 
tradition  of  Belfast  and  the  Chamberlain 
tradition  of  Birmingham,  could  have  a  huge 
amount  of  fun  appealing  from  one  to  the 
other;  congratulating  Belfast  on  the  bold 
Protectionist  doctrines  prevalent  in  Ireland; 
adjuring  Mr.  Bonar  Law  and  the  Tariff  Re- 
formers never  to  forget  the  fight  made  by  Bel- 
fest  for  the  sacred  principles  of  Free  Trade. 
But  the  fact  that  the  Belfast  school  is  merely 
the  Manchester  school  is  only  one  aspect  of 
this  general  truth  about  the  abrupt  collapse 
into  antiquity;  a  sudden  superannuation. 
The  whole  march  of  that  Manchester  indus- 
trialism is  not  only  halted  but  turned;  the 
whole  position  is  outflanked  by  new  forces 
coming  from  new  directions;  the  wealth  of 


Belfast  and  the  Eeligious  Problem      209 

the  peasantries  blocks  the  road  in  front  of  it; 
the  general  strike  has  risen  menacing  its  rear. 
That  strange  cloud  of  self-protecting  vanity 
may  still  permit  Belfast  to  believe  in  Belfast, 
but  Britain  does  not  really  believe  in  Belfast. 
Philosophical  forces  far  wider  and  deeper 
than  politics  have  undermined  the  concep- 
tion of  progressive  Protestantism  in  Ireland. 
I  should  say  myself  that  mere  English  as- 
cendancy in  that  island  became  intellectually 
impossible  on  the  day  when  Shaftesbury  in- 
troduced the  first  Factory  Act,  and  on  the 
day  when  Newman  published  the  first  pages 
of  the  Apologia.  Both  men  were  certainly 
Tories  and  probably  Unionists. 

Neither  were  connected  with  the  subject  or 
with  each  other;  the  one  hated  the  Pope  and 
the  other  the  Liberator.  But  industrialism 
was  never  again  self-evidently  superior  after 
the  first  event,  or  Protestantism  self-evidently 
superior  after  the  other.  And  it  needed  a 
towering  and  self-evident  superiority  to  ex- 
cuse the  English  rule  in  Ireland.  It  is  only 
on  the  ground  of  unquestionably  doing  good 
that  men  can  do  so  much  evil  as  that. 


210  Irish  Impressions 

Some  Orangemen  before  the  war  indulged 
in  a  fine  rhetorical  comparison  between  Wil- 
liam of  Prussia  and  William  of  Orange;  and 
openly  suggested  that  the  new  Protestant  De- 
liverer from  the  north  would  come  from 
North  Germany.  I  was  assured  by  my  more 
moderate  hosts  in  Belfast  that  such  Orange- 
men could  not  be  regarded  as  representative 
or  even  responsible.  On  that  I  cannot  pro- 
nounce. The  Orangemen  may  not  have  been 
representative;  they  may  not  have  been  re- 
sponsible ;  but  I  am  quite  sure  they  were  right. 
I  am  quite  sure  those  poor  fanatics  were  far 
nearer  the  nerve  of  historical  truth  than 
professional  politicians  like  Sir  Edward  Car- 
son or  industrial  capitalists  like  Sir  George 
Clark.  If  ever  there  was  a  natural  alliance 
in  the  world,  it  would  have  been  the  alliance 
between  Belfast  and  Berlin.  The  fanatics 
may  be  fools,  but  they  have  here  the  light 
by  which  the  foolish  things  can  confound 
the  wise.  It  is  the  brightest  spot  in  Belfast, 
bigotry,  for  if  the  light  in  its  body  be  dark- 
ness, it  is  still  brighter  than  the  darkness.  By 
the   vision   that   goes    everywhere   with    the 


Belfast  and  the  Beligious  Problem      211 


virility  and  greatness  of  religion,  these  men 
have  indeed  pierced  to  the  Protestant  secret 
and  the  meaning  of  four  hundred  years. 
Their  Protestantism  is  Prussianism,  not  as  a 
term  of  abuse,  but  as  a  term  of  abstract  and 
impartial  ethical  science.  Belfast  and  Berlin 
are  on  the  same  side  in  the  deepest  of  all  the 
spiritual  issues  involved  in  the  war.  And 
that  is  the  simple  issue  of  whether  pride  is 
a  sin,  and  therefore  a  weakness.  Modern 
mentality,  or  great  masses  of  it,  has  seriously 
advanced  the  view  that  it  is  a  weakness  to 
disarm  criticism  by  self-criticism,  and  a 
strength  to  disdain  criticism  through  self-con- 
fidence. That  is  the  thesis  for  which  Berlin 
gave  battle  to  the  older  civilisation  in  Eu- 
rope; and  that  for  which  Belfast  gave  battle 
to  the  older  civilisation  in  Ireland.  It  may 
be,  as  I  suggested,  that  such  Protestant  pride 
is  the  old  Calvinism,  with  its  fixed  election 
of  the  few.  It  may  be  that  the  Protestantism 
is  merely  Paganism,  with  its  brutish  gods  and 
giants  lingering  in  corners  of  the  more  savage 
north.  It  may  be  that  the  Calvinism  was 
itself  a  recurrence  of  the  Paganism.     But  in 


212  Irish  Impressions 

any  case,  I  am  sure  that  this  superiority, 
which  can  master  men  like  a  nightmare,  can 
also  vanish  like  a  nightmare.  And  I  strongly 
suspect  that  in  this  matter  also,  as  in  the 
matter  of  property  as  viewed  by  a  peasantry, 
the  older  civilisation  will  prove  to  be  the  real 
civilisation;  and  that  a  healthier  society  will 
return  to  regarding  pride  as  a  pestilence,  as 
the  Socialists  have  already  returned  to  regard- 
ing avarice  as  a  pestilence.  The  old  tradition 
of  Christendom  was  that  the  highest  form  of 
faith  was  a  doubt.  It  was  the  doubt  of  a 
man  about  his  soul.  It  was  admirably  ex- 
pressed to  me  by  Mr.  Yeats,  who  is  now  cham- 
pion of  Catholic  orthodoxy,  in  stating  his 
preference  for  mediaeval  Catholicism  as  com- 
pared with  modern  humanitarianism;  "  Men 
were  thinking  then  about  their  own  sins,  and 
now  they  are  always  thinking  about  other 
people's."  And  even  by  the  Protestant  test  of 
progress,  pride  is  seen  to  be  arrested  by  a 
premature  paralysis.  Progress  is  superiority 
to  oneself;  and  it  is  stopped  dead  by  superior- 
ity to  others.  The  case  is  even  clearer  by  the 
test   of   poetry,   which   is   much   more   solid 


Belfast  and  the  Religious  Problem      213 

and  permanent  than  progress.  The  Super- 
man may  have  been  a  sort  of  poem;  but  he 
could  never  be  any  sort  of  poet.  The  more 
we  attempt  to  analyse  that  strange  element 
of  wonder,  which  is  the  soul  of  all  the  arts, 
the  more  we  shall  see  that  it  must  depend  on 
some  subordination  of  the  self  to  a  glory  ex- 
isting beyond  it,  and  even  in  spite  of  it.  Man 
always  feels  as  a  creature  when  he  acts  as  a 
creator.  When  he  carves  a  cathedral  it  is 
to  make  a  monster  that  can  swallow  him. 
But  the  Nietzschean  nightmare  of  swallow- 
ing the  world  is  only  a  sort  of  yawning. 
When  the  evolutionary  anarch  has  broken  all 
links  and  laws  and  is  at  last  free  to  speak, 
he  finds  he  has  nothing  to  say.  So  German 
songs  under  the  imperial  eagle  fell  silent  like 
songbirds  under  a  hawk;  and  it  is  but  rarely, 
and  here  and  there,  that  a  Belfast  merchant 
liberates  his  soul  in  a  lyric.  He  has  to  get 
Mr.  Kipling  to  write  a  Belfast  poem,  in  a 
style  technically  attuned  to  the  Belfast  pic- 
tures. There  is  the  true  Tara  of  the  silent 
harp,  and  the  throne  and  habitation  of  the 
dream;  and  it  is  there  that  the  Celtic  pessi- 


214  Irish  Impressions 

mists  should  weep  in  silence  for  the  end  of 
song.  Blowing  one's  own  trumpet  has  not 
proved  a  good  musical  education. 

In  logic  a  wise  man  will  always  put  the 
cart  before  the  horse.  That  is  to  say,  he  will 
always  put  the  end  before  the  means;  when 
he  is  considering  the  question  as  a  whole. 
He  does  not  construct  a  cart  in  order  to  exer- 
cise a  horse.  He  employs  a  horse  to  draw 
a  cart,  and  whatever  is  in  the  cart.  In  all 
modern  reasoning  there  is  a  tendency  to  make 
the  mere  political  beast  of  burden  more  im- 
portant than  the  chariot  of  man  it  is  meant 
to  draw.  This  had  led  to  a  dismissal  of  all 
such  spiritual  questions  in  favour  of  what 
are  called  social  questions;  and  this  to  a  too 
facile  treatment  of  things  like  the  religious 
question  in  Belfast.  There  is  a  religious 
question;  and  it  will  not  have  an  irreligious 
answer.  It  will  not  be  met  by  the  limitation 
of  Christian  faith,  but  rather  by  the  exten- 
sion of  Christian  charity.  But  if  a  man 
says  that  there  is  no  difference  bet^veen  a 
Protestant  and  a  Catholic,  and  that  both  can 
act  in  an  identical  fashion  everywhere  but  in 


Belfast  and  the  Religious  Problem      215 

a  church  or  chapel,  he  is  madly  driving  the 
cart-horse  when  he  has  forgotten  the  cart. 
A  religion  is  not  the  church  a  man  goes  to 
but  the  cosmos  he  lives  in;  and  if  any  sceptic 
forgets  it,  the  maddest  fanatic  beating  an 
Orange  drum  about  the  Battle  of  the  Boyne 
is  a  better  philosopher  than  he. 

Many  uneducated  and  some  educated  peo- 
ple in  Belfast,  quite  sincerely  believe  that 
Roman  priests  are  fiends,  only  waiting  to  re- 
kindle the  fires  of  the  Inquisition.  For  two 
simple  reasons,  however,  I  declined  to  take 
this  fact  as  evidence  of  anything  except  their 
sincerity.  First,  because  the  stories,  when  re- 
duced to  their  rudiment  of  truth,  generally 
resolved  themselves  into  the  riddle  of  poor 
Roman  Catholics  giving  money  to  their  own 
religion;  and  seemed  to  deplore  not  so  much 
a  dependence  on  priests  as  an  independence 
of  employers.  And  second  for  a  reason 
drawn  from  my  own  experience,  as  well  as 
comm.on  knowledge,  concerning  the  Protes- 
tant gentry  in  the  south  of  Ireland.  The 
southern  Unionists  spoke  quite  without  this 
special  horror  of  Catholic  priests  or  peasants. 


216  Irish  Impressions 

They  grumbled  at  them  or  laughed  at  them 
as  a  man  grumbles  or  laughs  at  his  neigh- 
bours; but  obviously  they  no  more  dreamed 
that  the  priest  would  burn  them  than  that  he 
would  eat  them.  If  the  priests  were  as  black 
as  the  black  Protestants  painted  them,  they 
would  be  at  their  worst  where  they  are  with 
the  majority;  and  would  be  known  at  their 
worst  by  the  minority.  It  was  clear  that  Bel- 
fast held  the  more  bigoted  tradition,  not  be- 
cause it  knew  more  of  priests,  but  because  it 
knew  less  of  them;  not  because  it  was  on  the 
spot,  but  because  the  spot  was  barred.  An 
even  more  general  delusion  was  the  idea  that 
all  the  southern  Irish  dreamed  and  did  no 
work.  I  pointed  out  that  this  also  was  incon- 
sistent with  concrete  experience;  since  all 
over  the  world  a  man  who  makes  a  small 
farm  pay  has  to  work  very  hard  indeed.  In 
historic  fact,  the  old  notion  that  the  Irish 
peasant  did  no  work,  but  only  dreamed,  had 
a  simple  explanation.  It  merely  meant  that 
he  did  no  work  for  a  capitalist's  profit;  but 
'dreamed  of  some  day  doing  work  for  his  own 
profit.     But  there  may  also  have  been  this 


Belfast  and  the  Religious  Problem      217 

distorted  truth  in  the  tradition;  that  a  free 
peasant,  while  he  extends  his  own  work, 
creates  his  own  holidays.  He  is  not  idle  all 
day,  but  he  may  be  idle  at  any  time  of  the 
day;  he  does  not  dream  whenever  he  feels  in- 
clined, but  he  does  dream  whenever  he 
chooses.  A  famous  Belfast  manufacturer,  a 
man  of  capacity,  but  one  who  shook  his  head 
over  the  unaccountable  prevalence  of  priests, 
assured  me  that  he  had  seen  peasants  in  the 
south  doing  nothing,  at  all  sorts  of  odd  times; 
and  this  is  doubtless  the  difference  between 
the  farm  and  the  factory.  The  same  gentle- 
man showed  me  over  the  colossal  shipping  of 
the  great  harbour,  with  all  machinery  and 
transport  leading  up  to  it.  No  man  of  any 
imagination  would  be  insensible  to  such  ti- 
tanic experiments  of  his  race;  or  deny  the 
dark  poetry  of  those  furnaces  fit  for  Vulcan 
or  those  hammers  worthy  of  Thor.  But  as 
I  stood  on  the  dock  I  said  to  my  guide: 
"  Have  you  ever  asked  what  all  this  is  for?  " 
He  was  an  intelligent  man,  an  exile  from 
metaphysical  Scotland,  and  he  knew  what  I 
meant.     "  I  don't  know,"  he  said,  "  perhaps 


218  Irish  Impressions 

we  are  only  insects  building  a  coral  reef.  I 
don't  know  what  is  the  good  of  the  coral 
reef."  "  Perhaps,"  I  said,  "  that  is  what  the 
peasant  dreams  about,  and  why  he  listens  to 
the  priest." 

For  there  seems  to  be  a  fashionable  fallacy 
to  the  effect  that  religious  equality  is  some- 
thing to  be  done  and  done  with,  that  we  may 
go  on  to  the  real  matter  of  political  equality. 
In  philosophy  it  is  the  flat  contrary  that  is 
true.  Political  equality  is  something  to  be 
done  and  done  with,  that  we  may  go  on  to 
the  much  more  real  matter  of  religion.  At 
the  Abbey  Theatre  I  saw  a  forcible  play  by 
Mr.  St.  John  Ervine,  called  The  Mixed 
Marriage;  which  I  should  remember  if  it 
were  only  for  the  beautiful  acting  of  Miss 
Maire  O'Neill.  But  the  play  moved  me  very 
much  as  a  play;  yet  I  felt  that  the  presence  of 
this  fallacy  falsified  it  in  some  measure.  The 
dramatist  seemed  to  resent  a  schism  merely 
because  it  interfered  with  a  strike.  But  the 
only  object  of  striking  is  liberty;  and  the  only 
object  of  liberty  is  life:  a  thing  wholly  spiri- 
tual.    It  is  economic  liberty  that  should  be 


Belfast  and  the  Religious  Problem      219 

dismissed  as  these  people  dismiss  theology. 
We  only  get  it,  to  forget  it.  It  is  right  that 
men  should  have  houses,  right  that  they 
should  have  land,  right  that  they  should  have 
laws  to  protect  the  land;  but  all  these  things 
are  only  machinery  to  make  leisure  for  the 
labouring  soul.  The  house  is  only  a  stage 
set  up  by  stage  carpenters  for  the  acting  of 
what  Mr.  J.  B.  Yeats  has  called  ''  the  drama 
of  the  home."  All  the  most  dramatic  things 
happen  at  home,  from  being  born  to  being 
dead.  What  a  man  thinks  about  these  things 
is  his  life;  and  to  substitute  for  them  a  bustle 
of  electioneering  and  legislation  is  to  wander 
about  among  screens  and  pulleys  on  the  wrong 
side  of  pasteboard  scenery;  and  never  to  act 
the  play.  And  that  play  is  always  a  miracle 
play;  and  the  name  of  its  hero  is  Everyman. 
When  I  came  back  from  the  desolate 
splendour  of  the  Donegal  sea  and  shore,  and 
saw  again  the  square  garden  and  the  statue 
outside  the  Dublin  hotel,  I  did  not  know  I 
was  returning  to  something  that  might  well 
be  called  more  desolate.  For  it  was  when  I 
entered  the  hotel  that  I  first  found  that  it  was 


220  Irish  Impressions 

full  of  the  awful  tragedy  of  the  Leinster.  I 
had  often  seen  death  in  a  home,  but  never 
death  decimating  a  vast  hostelry;  and  there 
was  something  strangely  shocking  about  the 
empty  seats  of  men  and  women  with  whom 
I  had  talked  so  idly  a  few  days  before.  It 
was  almost  as  if  there  was  more  tragedy  in 
the  cutting  short  of  such  trivial  talk  than  in 
the  sundering  of  life-long  ties.  But  there  was 
all  the  dignity  as  well  as  the  tragedy  of  man; 
and  I  was  glad,  before  I  left  Ireland,  to  have 
seen  the  nobler  side  of  the  Anglo-Irish  gar- 
rison; and  to  have  known  men  of  my  own 
blood,  however  mistaken,  so  enduring  the  end 
of  things.  With  the  bad  news  from  the  sea 
came  better  news  from  the  war;  Mangin  had 
struck  the  sensational  blow  that  cut  off  the 
Germans  as  they  marched  upon  Chalons;  and 
with  all  the  emotions  of  an  exile,  however 
temporary,  I  knew  that  my  own  land  was 
secure.  Somehow,  the  bad  and  good  news 
together  turned  my  mind  more  and  m.ore 
towards  England;  and  all  the  inner  humour 
and  insular  geniality  which  even  the  Irish 
may  some  day  be  allowed  to  understand.     As 


Belfast  and  the  Religious  Problem      221 

I  went  homewards  on  the  next  boat  that 
started  from  the  Irish  port,  and  the  Wicklow 
hills  receded  in  a  rainy  and  broken  sunlight, 
it  was  with  all  the  simplest  of  those  ancient 
appetites  with  which  a  man  should  come  back 
to  his  own  country.  Only  there  clung  to  me, 
not  to  be  denied,  one  sentiment  about  Ireland, 
one  sentiment  that  I  could  not  transfer  to  Eng- 
land; which  called  me  like  an  elf  land  of  so 
many  happy  figures,  from  Puck  to  Pickwick. 
As  I  looked  at  those  rainy  hills,  I  knew  at 
least  that  I  was  looking,  perhaps  for  the  last 
time,  on  something  rooted  in  the  Christian 
faith.  There  at  least  the  Christian  ideal  was 
something  more  than  an  ideal;  it  was  in  a 
special  sense  real.  It  was  so  real  that  it  ap- 
peared even  in  statistics.  It  was  so  self-evi- 
dent as  to  be  seen  even  by  sociologists.  It 
was  a  land  where  our  religion  had  made  evea 
its  vision  visible.  It  had  made  even  its  un- 
popular virtues  popular.  It  must  be,  in  the 
times  to  come,  a  final  testing-place,  of  whether 
a  people  that  will  take  that  name  seriously, 
and  even  solidly,  is  fated  to  suffer  or  to 
succeed. 


222  Irish  Impressions 

As  the  long  line  of  the  mountain  coast  un- 
folded before  me  I  had  an  optical  illusion; 
it  may  be  that  many  have  had  it  before.  As 
new  lengths  of  coast  and  lines  of  heights  were 
unfolded,  I  had  the  fancy  that  the  whole  land 
was  not  receding  but  advancing,  lil^e  some- 
thing spreading  out  its  arms  to  the  world.  A 
chance  shred  of  sunshine  rested,  like  a  riven 
banner,  on  the  hill  which  I  believe  is  called  in 
Irish  the  Mountain  of  the  Golden  Spears; 
and  I  could  have  imagined  that  the  spears 
and  the  banner  were  coming  on.  And  in  that 
flash  I  remembered  that  the  men  of  this  island 
had  once  gone  forth,  not  the  torches  of  con- 
querors or  destroyers;  but  as  missionaries  in 
the  very  midnight  of  the  Dark  Ages,  like  a 
multitude  of  moving  candles,  that  were  the 
light  of  the  world. 


THE  END 


This  book.  i^UE  X)n^;he  iaatjlate^  stamped  below 
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■'' :  6  I94S 
JAN11195T 

WAY  2  9  1961 

JUM  2  2  196 


JUN  5    1955 


3 

0 


AM 
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REC'DID-URL 


DEC  17  19aZ 


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Ij  3  1 1 58  00839  5484 


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AA    000  396  046 


UNIVERSITY  of  CALIFORNIA 


